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THE 


STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY 


ITS  OBJECT,  SCOPE,  AND  METHOD 


PROBLEMS 


or 


LIFE    AND    MIND 

ST 

GEOEaE    HENEY    LEWES 


PROBLEM  THE  FIRST 

THE    STUDY   OF  PSYCHOLOGY 

ITS  OBJECT,  SCOPE,  AND  METHOD 


BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON,  OSGOOD  AND  COMPANY. 

Cde  Etocrciic  Press,  €am6rilig:e. 

1879. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTEE  I. 

PAOB 

THE  OBJECT, 3 

{The  Relation  of  Psychology  to  Physiology),          >        .        .  9 

(5o(^y  anci  Mind),        . 19 

{Function  and  Faculty), 27 

{Mechanism  and  Exjperience),       ......  29 

.     CHAPTER  II. 

THE  MOTIVE, 39 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  POSITION  OP  THE   SCIENCE, 47 

{Objective  and  Subjective  Laxvs),    ....  50 

(  Viewa  of  Comte,  Mill,  and  Spencer),    ...,•,  54 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  SOCIAL  FACTOR, 71 

CHAPTER  V. 

SUBJECTIVE   ANALYSIS  AND   THE  INTROSPECTIVE   METHOD,            .  82 

CHAPTER  VI. 

LIMITATIONS  OP  THE  INTROSPECTIVE  METHOD 90 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  FREEDOM  OP  THE  WILL, ,          ,  101 


VUl  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VIIL 

PAQB 
OBJECTIVE  ANALYSIS, .  112 

(Animal  Psychology), 118 

{Differences  of  Animal  and  Human), 129 

{The  Moral  Sense), 144 

{History), 152 

CHAPTER  IX. 

IHE   GENERAL  MIND,  .  159 

CHAPTER  X. 

IHB  MENTAL   FORMS,  .....»•.  171 

CHAPTER  XL 

ANALYSIS  AND  SYNTHESIS, 178 


NOTICE. 


The  following  Problem  is  published  separately  in 
obedience  to  an  implied  wish  of  the  Author,  and  has 
been  printed  from  his  manuscript  with  no  other 
alterations  than  such  as  it  is  felt  certain  that  he 
would  have  sanctioned. 

Another  volume  will  appear  in  the  autumn. 


PROBLEM  I. 


THE    STUDY   OF    PSYCHOLOGY; 

ITS  OBJECT,  SCOPE,  AND  METHOD. 


"  $i/x'7S  o^p  ^iffiv  d^fws  X6701;  Karavorjcai  ofet  twarhv  etvai  &vev  rrjs  toO  SXov 
t/tiaeus ; " 

Plato  :  Phcedrus. 

"Kaum  giebt  es  eine  Wissenschaft,  iiber  deren  Standpvinkt  und  Entwick- 
lungsstufe  grossere  Zweifel  und  Widerspriiche  herrschen,  als  die  Wissenschaft 
der  Seele.  Wahrend  den  Einen  die  Psychologie  langst  ausgelebt,  keiner  erheb- 
licben  Weiterbildung  mehr  fiihig  scheint,  sind  Andere  der  Meinung,  dass  sie 
kaum  erst  in  den  Anfangen  ihrer  Entwicklung  begriffen  sei." 

WuNDT  :  Vorlesungen  iiber  die  Menschen  und  Thierseele, 
1863,  i.  I. 


ft 


THE  STUDY  OF  PSYCHOLOG' 


CHAPTEK    I. 

THE   OBJECT. 

1.  In  every  science  we  define  the  object  and  scope  of 
tlie  search,  the  motive  of  the  search,  and  the  means 
whereby  the  aim  may  be  reached.  The  purpose  of 
the  following  pages  is  to  set  forth  what  it  is  we  study 
in  Psychology,  why  we  study  it,  and  how  we  ought 
to  study  it. 

A  glance  at  the  literature  of  the  subject  discloses 
the  utmost  discordance  on  these  cardinal  points.  The 
conceptions  of  the  object  and  scope  are  different,  and 
lead  to  the  adoption  of  antagonistic  methods.  On 
the  one  side  stands  the  ancient  metempirical  concep- 
tion of  a  so-called  Eational  Psychology,  with  its 
deductive  method  of  ontological  research.  Its  adhe- 
rents, even  when  condescending  to  what  they  call 
Empirical  Psychology,  so  little  regard  the  data  of 
Experience,  that  they  quietly  ignore  the  complex  con- 
ditions of  the  living  organism,  and  treat  mental  facts 
simply  as  the  manifestations  of  a  Psychical  Principle, 
at  once  unknowable  and  intimately  known,  a  myste- 
rious agent  revealed  to  Consciousness.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  an  empirical  school  which  professes  to 


4  PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

confine  itself  to  tlie  data  of  Experience,  and  to  pursue 
the  inductive  method :  discountenancing  Ontology, 
and  coquetting  with  Physiology.  This  school  keeps 
up  the  traditions  of  a  Psychical  Principle  independent 
of  the  organism,  and  of  Introspection  as  the  exclusive 
method  of  research.  Of  late  years  there  have  arisen 
writers  who  have  tried  to  efi'ect  a  compromise  :  in- 
voking physiological  data  for  one  class  of  facts,  and 
only  invoking  the  Psychical  Principle  where  physio- 
logical data  fell  short. 

The  development  of  the  science  has  been  along 
three  lines  :  Locke,  Berkeley,  Hume,  Condillac, 
Hartley,  and  James  Mill  made  imperishable  contri- 
butions to  the  introspective  analysis  of  the  phenomena 
in  their  mental  aspect.  Cabanis,  Gall,  and  recent 
physiologists,  have  brought  into  prominence  the  phy- 
sical aspect-,  revealing  many  of  the  biological  condi- 
tions. Lotze,  Wundt,  Bain,  Spencer,  Taine,  combine 
and  complete  these  efi"orts  of  subjective  and  objective 
research,  and  have  given  the  science  a  new  impulse 
by  their  thorough  and  constant  recognition  of  the 
twofold  aspect  of  the  phenomena. 

2.  And  yet  the  constitution  of  the  science  has  still 
to  be  effected.  The  constitution  of  a  science  means, 
l**,  that  circumscription  of  a  class  of  phenomena 
which,  while  marking  its  relations  to  other  classes, 
assigns  it  a  distinctive  position  in  the  series  of  the 
sciences ;  2°,  that  specijication  of  the  object  and 
method  of  search  which,  when  aided  by  fundamental 
inductions  established  on  experiment,  enables  all 
future  inquiries  to  converge  towards  a  self-sustaining 
and  continuous  development.  In  a  science  thus  con- 
stituted,  the  discovery   of  to-day   enlarges   without 


THE   STUDY   OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  5 

overturning  the  conceptions  of  yesterday.  Each 
worker  brings  his  hibours  as  a  contribution  to  a  com- 
mon fund,  not  as  an  anarchical  displacement  of  the 
labours  of  predecessors.  Henceforward  there  is 
system,  but  no  systems  :  schools  and  professors  no 
longer  give  their  names  -as  authorities  in  place  of 
reasons.  Astronomy,  to  take  one  example,  is  in  con- 
stant progress,  but  the  progress  is  that  of  evolution, 
not  revolution ;  and  the  doctrines  taught  are  not 
taught  as  Copernican,  Newtonian,  or  Laplacian,  but 
as  astronomical.  Physics  and  Chemistry  advance 
with  rapid  strides  to  a  fuller  and  more  exact  appre- 
ciation of  their  respective  phenomena.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  Biology,  but  cannot  be  said  of  Psycho- 
logy. We  still  hear  of  the  Intuitional  Psychology 
and  the  Sensational  School.  We  are  referred  to  the 
Psychology  of  Kant  or  Hegel,  of  Locke  or  Spencer, 
as  if  the  doctrines  taught  were  still  individual  appre- 
ciations of  the  facts  on  the  guarantee  of  each  author's 
renown. 

3.  Nevertheless,  while  this  is  assuredly  the  present 
state  of  the  study,  and  one  which  is  anomalous,  the 
materials  exist  whereby  "  a  first  approximation "  to 
the  constitution  of  the  science  may  be  made.  Neither 
introspective  analysis  alone,  nor  objective  observation 
alone,  nor  even  the  union  of  the  two,  if  confined  to 
the  invest] oration  of  the  individual  mind  and  indivi- 
dual  organism,  will  suffice.  Psychology  investigates 
the  Human  Mind,  not  an  individual's  thoughts  and 
feelings ;  and  has  to  consider  it  as  the  product  of  the 
Human  Organism  not  only  in  relation  to  the  Cosmos, 
but  also  in  relation  to  Society.  For  man  is  distinc- 
tively a  social  being ;   his  animal  impulses  are  pro- 


6  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AltTD   MIXD. 

foundly  modified  by  social  influences,  and  his  higher 
faculties  are  evolved  through  social  needs.  By  this 
recognition  of  the  social  factor  as  the  complement  to 
the  biological  factor,  this  recognition  of  the  Mind  as 
an  expression  of  organic  and  social  conditions,  the 
first  step  is  taken  towards  the  constitution  of  our 
science. 

The  credit  of  this  conception  is  due  to  Auguste 
Comte.  Others  before  him  had  of  course  recognised 
the  fact  that  social  conditions  greatly  influenced 
mental  evolution;  the  fact  was  transparent,  but  no 
one  had  seized  its  full  significance.  Nor  do  I  think 
that  even  Comte  saw  more  than  its  general  range. 
His  abstention  from  analysis  and  detailed  investiga- 
tion kept  him  from  specifying  the  mode  of  operation 
of  the  social  factor;  and  his  '^cerebral  theory,"  so 
unsatisfactory  in  its  method,  and  so  fantastic  in  its 
anatomy,  could  not  supply  what  he  left  unspecified. 

4.  It  is  not  enough  to  transfer  the  point  of  view 
from  the  individual  to  the  race,  and  to  take  the  social 
factor  into  account ;  we  must  also  frankly  accept  the 
biological  point  of  view,  which  regarding  mental 
functions  as  vital  functions,  and  states  of  conscious- 
ness as  separable  from  states  of  the  organism  only  in 
our  mode  of  apprehending  them,  sets  aside  the  tradi- 
tional conception  of  the  Mind  as  an  agent  apart  from 
the  organism.  This  premised,  we  may  define  the 
object  of  our  search  somewhat  thus : 

Psychology  is  the  analysis  and  classification  of 
the  sentient  functions  and  faculties,  revealed 
to  observation  and  induction,  completed  by 
the  reduction  of  them  to  their  conditions  of 
existence,  biological  and  sociological. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  7 

An  organism  when  in  action  is  only  to  be  under- 
stood, by  understanding  both  it  and  the  raediumyro??i 
which  it  draws  its  materials,  and  on  which  it  reacts. 
Its  conditions  of  existence  are  first  the  structural 
mechanism,  and,  secondly,  the  medium  in  which  it  is 
placed.  When  we  know  the  part  played  by  the 
mechanism,  and  the  part  played  by  the  medium,  we 
have  gone  as  far  as  analysis  can  help  us ;  we  have 
scientifically  explained  the  actions  of  the  organism. 
This,  which  is  so  obvious  in  reference  to  vital  actions 
that  it  is  a  physiological  commonplace,  is  so  little 
understood  in  reference  to  the  mental  class  of  vital 
actions  that  it  may  appear  a  psychological  paradox, 
and  a  paradox  which  no  explanation  can  make  accept- 
able so  long  as  the  Mind  is  thought  to  be  an  entity 
inhabitincc  the  orfjanism,  usinec  it  as  an  instrument ; 
and  so  long  as  Society  is  thought  to  be  an  artificial 
product  of  man's  mind, — in  which  case  it  cannot  be 
one  of  the  conditions  of  mental  evolution. 

5.  Leaving  the  justification  of  our  definition  to 
subsequent  pages,  we  are  enabled  by  it  to  specify  the 
class  of  phenomena  which  form  the  object  of  our 
study.  Instead  of  defining  it  as  *'  The  science  of  the 
facts  of  Consciousness,"  which  is  at  once  ambiguous 
and  restricted,  we  propose,  as  more  precise  and  com- 
prehensive, "  The  science  of  the  facts  of  Sentience.'\ 
These  terms  have  the  advantage  of  at  once  ranging 
the  search  under  the  general  science  of  Life,  and  also 
of  rescuing  many  phenomena  from  the  ambiguity 
arising    when   these   are   unconscious.^'      There   are 

*  Sir  W.  Hamilton,  treating  of  certain  mental  modifications,  says — 
"  They  are  not  in  themselves  revealed  to  consciousness  ;  but  as  certain 
facts  of  consciousness  necessarily  suppose  them  to  exist,  and  to  exert  an 


8  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

many  writers  who  not  only  limit  tlie  science  to  the 
facts  of  Consciousness  (which  forces  them  to  extreme 
vacillation  in  the  use  of  this  term),  but  also  regard 
Consciousness  as  absolutely  sui  generis,  unallied  with 
all  other  facts,  even  the  organic,  so  that  the  science 
calls  for  an  unique  position,  and  a  Method  that  is 
unique.  In  this  work  the  science  will  be  regarded  as 
a  branch  of  Biology,  and  its  Method  as  that  which  is 
pursued  in  the  physical  sciences.  The  broad  distinc- 
tion of  objective  and  subjective  aspects  I  fully  admit, 
but  deny  that  this  calls  for  any  change  in  Method. 
I  admit  the  speciality  of  what  are  called  spiritual 
facts  ;  I  admit  that  because  of  this  speciality  they  can 
never  be  explained  by,  or  reduced  to  material  facts, 
whether  we  assume  their  difference  to  be  that  of 
agents  or  only  of  aspects ;  I  further  admit  that  no 
deductions  from  what  is  known  objectively  of  the 
material  mechanism  will  explain  the  phenomena  of 
sensibility,  as  states  of  consciousness,  any  more  than 
anatomical  knowledge  of  an  organ  alone  will  enable 
us  to  deduce  its  function.  But  for  all  this  I  must 
reject  the  separation  of  Psychology  from  Biology  so 
long  as  I  am  unable  to  separate  Mind  from  Life. 

The  relation  of  Mind  to  Life  is  so  plain  that  no 
one  has  ever  doubted  it,  yet  so  obscure  that  no  one 
has  been  able  to  present  a  precise  statement  of  their 
points  of  identity  and  difference.  We  may  define, 
we  cannot  explain  it.  We  can  define  it  by  analyti- 
cally distinguishing  certain  functions  as  sentient  from 
other  functions  as  nutrient;    but  in  reality  no  such 

influence  in  the  mental  processes,  we  are  thus  constrained  to  admit  as 
modifications  of  mind  what  are  not  in  themselves  phenomena  of  con- 
sciousness."— Lectures  on  Metap/iysics,  1859,  i.  348. 


THE   STUDY    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.  9 

separation  is  feasible.  If  we  classify  certain  pheno- 
mena as  psychical,  and  others  as  vital,  the  artifice  is 
patent,  since  all  psychical  phenomena  are  vital,  and 
in  all  of  them  sensibility  is  a  factor.  This  identity 
admitted,  there  is  still  need  to  specify  the  difference 
which  leads  us  to  mark  off  Psychology  as  a  branch  of 
the  general  science  of  life.  That  science — Biology — 
includes  plants,  animals,  and  man,  with  the  respective 
subdivisions,  Phytology,  Zoology,  and  Anthropology. 
Each  of  these  is  again  subdivided  into  Morphology, 
the  science  of  form,  and  Physiology,  the  science  of 
function.  Now  clearly  it  is  neither  with  the  struc- 
ture of  the  organism,  nor  with  its  phases  of  evolution, 
that  Psychology  is  concerned,  but  solely  with  the 
sentient  functions  and  faculties  of  the  organism. 
And  as  on  a  first  glance  this  would  seem  to  be  the 
peculiar  province  of  Physiology,  the  science  of  func- 
tion,— the  question  may  arise,  Why  not  be  content 
with  it,  why  admit  a  separate  science  ?  There  are 
writers  who  explicitly  maintain  that  Psychology  is 
only  another  name  for  the  Physiology  of  the  sentient 
organism  ;  but  to  be  consistent  in  this  they  have  to 
extend  the  conception  of  Physiology  far  beyond  its 
scientific  acceptation. 

THE    RELATION    OF   PSYCHOLOGY    TO    PHYSIOLOGY. 

6.  This  is  a  point  of  considerable  importance,  and 
one  on  which  there  seems  great  vacillation  of  opinion, 
not  only  among  the  various  schools,  but  in  the 
writings  of  each  author.  I  will  endeavour  to  fix  with 
precision  the  conception  which  will  guide  my  own 
exposition. 


10  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

We  see  men  and  animals  performing  certain  actions 
in  consequence  of  certain  external  influences ;  and 
other  actions,  the  causation  of  which  is  hidden  from 
us,  and  assigned  to  internal  influences.  The  resem- 
blance of  both  classes  of  actions  to  those  performed 
by  ourselves,  irresistibly  leads  us  to  infer  that  in 
them,  as  in  us,  the  actions  were  stimulated  and 
guided  by  feelings.  Sometimes  we  think  only  of  the 
movements  which  we  see,  and  sometimes  only  of  the 
feelings  which  we  infer.  Accordingly,  we  may  say 
that  we  saw  a  man  snatch  up  a  stick  and  strike  a 
dog ;  or  that  we  knew  the  man  was  angry  and 
resolved  to  punish  the  dog.  This  twofold  interpre- 
tation of  the  same  event  we  name  its  objective  and 
subjective  aspect.  A  similar  twofold  aspect  is  pre- 
sented in  reflection  on  our  own  actions.  We  say 
that  we  are  both  Body  and  Mind.  We  know  that 
we  exist  as  objects,  perceptible  to  our  senses,  and  to 
the  senses  of  others  ;  and  as  subjects,  percipient  of 
objects,  and  conscious  of  feelings.  We  live,  feed, 
and  move.  We  feel,  think,  and  will.  The  solidity, 
form,  colour,  weight,  and  motions  of  the  Body  consti- 
tute the  objective,  visible  self  (oparov).  The  sensa- 
tions, ideas,  and  volitions  constitute  the  subjective, 
intelligible  self  (aetSeV).  Thus  opposed,  there  is  the 
broadest  of  all  possible  distinctions  between  Body 
and  Mind.  It  was  appreciated  by  the  earliest  in- 
quirers, who,  naturally  enough,  concluded  that  the 
inner  self  was  the  ruler,  if  not  the  fashioner  of  the 
outer  {to  tov  au,/j.aTo<i  ap-xjoov) ;  a  conception  which  still 
lingers  in  the  fallacy  of  organs  being  created  by 
functions.  Although  modern  science  tends  rather 
to\\^ards  the  opposite  extreme,  in  its  pursuit  of  the 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  11 

bodily  conditions  of  mental  functions,  the  broad 
contrast  between  the  objective  and  subjective  aspects 
remains  unassailed.  To  many  thinkers,  indeed,  the 
contrast  seems  far  more  than  that  of  aspects,  it  is 
that  of  agents.  They  postulate  a  vital  principle  and 
a  psychical  principle — a  Body,  the  organism,  as  the 
substance,  or  agent,  of  all  the  vital  actions,  and  a 
Soul,  the  subject,  or  agent,  of  all  the  mental  phe- 
nomena. The  difference  in  the  physical  and  mental 
aspect  is  interpreted  as  implying  a  diflference  in  the 
Vital  Principle  which  stands  for  the  one,  and  the 
Psychical  Principle  which  stands  for  the  other.  Yet 
that  these  are  merely  two  generalised  expressions  of 
the  observed  phenomena,  and  that  the  different 
actions  are  those  of  one  and  the  same  agent,  are  the 
only  conclusions  which  Experience  warrants.  They 
are  indeed  conclusions  which  a  philosophy  claiming 
another  basis  than  experience  rejects.  What  we 
know  is  that  the  living  organism  has  among  its 
manifestations  the  class  called  sentient ;  and  these 
are  known  as  sensible  affections,  i.e.,  the  changes 
excited  by  the  contact  of  external  causes,  and  assign- 
able to  visible  organs  of  Sense  ;  and  states  of  con- 
sciousness, i.e.,  the  changes  of  Feeling,  excited  by 
internal  causes,  and  not  assignable  to  visible  organs. 
It  is  not  known,  nor  is  there  any  evidence  to  suggest, 
that  one  of  these  classes  is  due  to  the  activity  of  the 
organism,  the  other  to  the  activity  of  another  agent. 
The  only  agent  known  is  the  organism.  That  an 
organism  can  feel  and  think  is  doubtless  mysterious. 
The  fact  that  it  does  so  is  all  we  are  concerned  with, 
and  is  neither  more  nor  less  mysterious  than  the  fact 
that  the  organism  can  live  and  move. 


12  PROBLEMS    OF    LIFE  AND    MIND. 

7.  Keeping  within  the  lines  of  Experience,  we  may 
be  said  to  know  the  nature  of  the  Soul,  as  we  know 
the  nature  of  the  Body.  We  know  the  separate 
manifestations ;  and  we  know  the  logical  artifices 
which  condense  the  manifold  phenomena  in  abstract 
terms.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  taught  that  "in  so  far  as 
mind  is  the  common  name  for  the  states  of  knowing, 
willing,  feeling,  &c.,  of  which  we  are  conscious,  it 
is  only  a  name  for  a  certain  series  of  connected 
phenomena  or  qualities,  and  consequently  expresses 
only  what  is  known."  Surely  that  is  enough  ?  Not 
for  the  metaphysician ;  for  he  adds  :  "  but  in  so  far 
as  it  denotes  that  subject  or  substance  in  which  the 
phenomena  of  knowing,  willing,  feeling,  &c.,  inhere 
—  something  behind  or  under  the  phenomena  —  it 
expresses  what  in  itself,  or  in  its  absolute  existence, 
is  unknown"  {Lectures,  i.  138). 

If  that  something  is  unknown,  on  what  grounds 
can  we  pretend  to  say  what  it  is  or  is  not  ?  We 
cannot  lawfully  say  that  it  is  not  some  mode  of 
existence  of  the  organism.  Waiving  this,  let  us  ask 
what  definite  and  verifiable  conception  is  expressed 
by  "  a  something  behind  the  phenomena"?  It  may 
mean  either  the  conditions  of  which  the  phenomena 
are  the  functions,  or  jpre-conditions  which  were  indis- 
pensable to  the  existence  of  those  conditions  then 
and  there.  Both  of  these  are  amenable  to  empirical 
methods.  Anvthino;  more  than  these  is  a  metem- 
pirical  figment,  an  unknown  quantity  to  which  no 
function  is  assignable,  and  which  consequently  can 
have  no  place  in  a  scientific  theory  dealing  only  with 
known  functions. 

Dismissing  then   the   metempirical  postulate  of  a 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  13 

"sometliing  behind  or  under  the  phenomena,"  which 
is  neither  their  conditions  nor  their  pre-conditions, 
we  have  the  two  abstractions  substance  and  subject  as 
the  "  something  "  in  which  the  observed  phenomena 
are  said  to  "  inhere."  If  the  reader  will  strike  out 
the  terms  mind,  feeling,  knowing,  and  willing,  from 
Hamilton's  passage,  and  replace  them  by  motion  as 
the  common  name  for  changes  of  position  in  space,  or 
by  vitality  as  the  common  name  for  the  changes  in  an 
organism,  he  will  see  that  the  substance  or  subject  in 
which  qualities  inhere  is  only  the  abstract  expression 
for  the  sums  of  such  qualities.  Mind  as  a  subject  is  the 
logical  conception  of  the  qualities  grouped  in  a  class;  if 
we  translate  it  into  a  physiological  conception,  and  seek 
the  agent  of  which  all  the  phenomena  are  the  actions, 
we  get  the  organism.  We  no  more  come  upon  the 
evidence  for  a  Psychical  Principle  which  is  not  the 
abstract  expression  of  this  orgauism,  than  we  come 
upon  a  Motor  Principle  behind  the  conditions  of 
movement,  or  a  Vital  Principle  under  the  conditions 
of  organic  change. 

8.  Thus,  and  thus  only,  is  it  permissible  in  a 
scientific  treatise  to  speak  of  Soul  or  Miud,  as  sub- 
stance or  subject.  Our  search  for  the  conditions  and 
pre-conditions  of  the  phenomena  is  therefore  solely 
directed  to  the  organism  in  relation  to  the  external 
world  and  to  the  social  world.  Thus  defined,  the 
place  of  Physiology  is  that  of  the  organic  conditions 
of  production ;  the  place  of  Psychology  being  that  of 
th<3  products.  Physiology  deals  directly  and  chiefly 
with  the  objective  aspect  of  sentient  facts,  and  their 
relation  to  the  visible  organism  ;  Psychology  with  the 
same   facts   in   their  subjective   aspect  as   states   of 


14  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

Feeling,  not  as  organic  changes.  The  physiologist 
traces  the  sequence  of  stimulation  through  sensory 
nerve,  centre,  motor  nerve,  and  muscle.  It  is  with 
the  mechanism  that  he  is  directly  concerned,  although 
from  first  to  last  he  has  indirectly  been  occupied  with 
the  changes  in  Feeling.  Were  it  not  for  this  implied 
identity  of  molecular  and  sentient  changes,  the 
sequences  would  have  no  more  significance  for  him 
than  similar  sequences  in  a  machine.  The  psycho- 
loofist  has  the  same  events  before  him,  but  reo-ards 
them  from  a  diff"erent  standpoint.  He  is  concerned 
directly  with  feelings  as  such,  and  their  relations  to 
other  feelings — with  the  products,  not  with  the  con- 
ditions of  production.  He  must,  indeed,  imply  the 
co-existence  of  organic  changes,  because  the  feelings 
are  those  of  a  living  organism ;  but  so  long  as  the 
nature  and  succession  of  the  phenomena  in  their  sub- 
jective aspect  attract  him,  he  need  only  tacitly  imply 
the  co-existence  of  the  objective.  His  concern  is 
with  changes  in  feeling,  with  processes  which  are 
conscious  processes,  or  which  have  been  and  may 
again  be  conscious. 

This  latter  clause  is  of  immense  importance,  and 
points  to  the  indispensable  union  of  the  j)hysiological 
with  the  psychological  investigation.  For  observe  : 
we  can  classify  subjective  facts  while  remaining 
ignorant  of  their  objective  correlates ;  as  ordinary 
men  classify  the  cardinal  facts  of  life  while  wholly 
ignorant  of  Anatomy  and  Physiology.  But  if  we 
desire  to  know  the  subjective  facts  with  accuracy 
and  fulness,  it  is  obvious  that  we  must  learn 
their  objective  conditions  of  production.  A  chemist 
studies  both  thQ  nature  of  the  elementary  substances 


THE   STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  15 

and  the  laws  of  tlieir  combination ;  having  these 
products  before  him,  he  analyses  them  in  the  search 
for  their  conditions  of  production.  Only  thus  can  he 
satisfy  himself  that  he  knows  the  products  accurately. 
But  in  seeking  these  conditions  he  is  forced  to  pass 
beyond  the  sphere  of  Chemistry  proper :  he  has  to 
invoke  the  aid  of  Physics.  The  physiologist  also  has 
to  pass  beyond  the  observation  of  functions,  and 
invoke  the  aid  of  Anatomy,  Chemistry,  and  Physics. 
In  like  manner,  although  the  exclusive  province  of 
the  psychologist  is  that  of  the  sentient  changes  as 
products,  the  aid  of  Physiology  is  needed  to  supply 
the  conditions  of  production ;  it  alone  can  disclose 
the  operation  of  changes  which  escape  subjective 
appreciation. 

To  the  physiologist  there  must  appear  a  grave 
misconception  in  the  common  declaration  that  "  all 
we  know  of  a  sensation  is  our  consciousness  of  it." 
This  is  a  truism  if  sensation  and  consciousness  are 
equivalent  terms,  but  such  equivalence  can  only  refer 
to  the  subjective  aspect  of  the  phenomenon.  Objec- 
tively, as  a  vital  fact,  we  know  a  sensation  as  a  force 
in  the  organism,  a  condition  of  movement,  a  com- 
ponent in  some  conscious  resultant,  which,  whether 
itself  consciously  discriminated,  or  merely  merged  in 
a  conscious  resultant,  has  the  same  vital,  the  same 
psychical  operation.  And  this  force,  this  sensible 
component,  which  lies  outside  the  range  of  intro- 
spection, may  be  proved  experimentally  to  be  in 
actual  operation ;  and  may  even  be  experimentally 
brought  within  the  range  of  introspection.  Thus, 
much  that  is  inexplicable  when  the  study  is  limited 
to  the  facts  of  consciousness  on  the  method  of  Intro- 


16  PROBLEMS   OF  LIFE   AND   MIND. 

spection,  becomes  explicable  when  extended  to  the 
facts  of  Sentience  on  the  wider  method. 

9.  The  contrast  between  the  two  studies  is  this : 
the  aspect  which  the  physiologist  brings  prominently 
forward  is  left  in  the  background  by  the  psychologist ; 
and  vice  versd.  For  example  :  I  have  certain  musical 
sensations  which  I  recognise  as  representing  three 
bars  of  the  Ninth  Symphony.  If,  as  a  physiologist,  I 
attempt  an  analysis  of  these  sensations,  I  seek  all  the 
successive  objective  conditions — aerial  pulses  of  certain 
amplitudes  and  rapidities,  neural  changes  in  the  audi- 
tory tract,  and  excitations  of  the  Sensorium  :  the 
result  of  all  these  being  the  musical  sensations.  But 
if,  as  a  psychologist,  I  attempt  the  analysis,  it  is  not 
to  these  objective  conditions  that  they  are  referred. 
These  are  presupposed;  and  instead  of  aerial  pulses  and 
neural  changes,  I  call  up  the  experiences  which  have 
assigned  every  note  to  its  position  in  the  scale,  and  to 
every  grouping  of  the  notes  its  position  in  my  mental 
history.  I  re-cognise  the  notes  and  their  intervals.  I 
also  re-cognise  the  arrangement  as  that  of  Beethoven's 
Ninth  Symphony.  ~  The  eflfect  of  these  sounds  is  far 
from  being  the  simple  response  of  my  auditory  tract ; 
it  is  blended  with  nascent  feelings,  dim  associations, 
and  distinct  images.  The  musical  value  of  each  note, 
and  the  musical  feeling  of  each  group,  the  recognition, 
and  the  revivals,  have  indeed  their  particular  organic 
conditions  ;  but  these  are  too  obscure  for  our  obser- 
vation, and  were  they  transparent  they  would  not  be 
regarded  in  a  psychological  exposition. 

There  is  a  physiology  of  the  sentient  organism,  and 
this  is  the  theory  of  the  sentient  functions  as  the 
direct  activity  of  the  organs.     There  is  a  psychology 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  17 

of  the  sentient  being,  and  tliis  is  tLe  theory  of  the 
Soul,  its  functions  and  acquired  faculties,  considered 
less  in  reference  to  the  organism  than  in  reference  to 
Experience  and  Conduct.  The  physiologist  presup- 
poses that  the  psychical  facts  are  known,  his  task 
being  to  detect  the  physical  factors.  The  psycho- 
logist presupposes  the  physical  factors,  his  task  being 
to  exhibit  the  mutual  relations  of  the  psychical  facts. 
A  theory  of  the  organism  and  a  theory  of  the  soul 
equally  demand  a  combination  of  the  objective  and 
subjective  data. 

Kant  {Anthropologie,  W.  x.  115),  with  many  other 
writers,  regards  all  physiological  explanation  of  psy- 
chical facts  as  idle  speculation,  "  because  we  know 
nothing  of  the  brain-fibres  and  their  action."  If 
Physiology  were  limited  to  brain-fibres  and  their 
action,  the  objection  would  be  valid,  for  our  igno- 
rance is  undeniable.  But  Kant  admits  that  uncon- 
scious sensations  and  obscure  perceptions  form  the 
larger  proportion  of  our  mental  states ;  and  as  Sense, 
on  its  receptive  side  at  least,  is  unquestionably  an 
organic  function,  the  exclusion  of  Physiology  is 
manifestly  impossible.  He  thinks  that  Physiology, 
though  incapable  of  telling  us  what  the  action  of 
brain-fibres  is,  can  tell  us  "  what  helps  or  obstructs 
them  ; "  and  he  assigns  it  therefore  the  position  of  a 
pragmatical  Anthropology.  One  cannot  say  that  in 
this,  or  in  psychological  investigation,  Kant's  success 
was  such  as  to  render  his  exclusion  of  Physiology 
wisely  imitable. 

10.  Sensations  and  ideas  spring  up  in  the  mind  as 
flowers  spring  np  in  the  fields.  We  see  them  only 
when  they  have  emerged.     We  watch  their  changes 

VOL.  IIL  B 


18         PROBLEMS  or  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

and  disappearance.  Science  is  prompted  to  seek  out 
the  conditions  of  their  appearance,  their  changes  and 
their  disappearance.  The  search  is  for  the  most  part 
groping  in  darkness.  We  know  that  a  seed  placed 
in  suitable  soil  will  throw  out  root  and  stem.  We 
can  trace  its  development  as  it  draws  certain  materials 
from  the  soil  and  the  atmosphere.  But  we  know  that 
the  seed  itself  is  a  product,  and  has  its  own  special 
determinism.  The  forms  which  the  seed  assumes 
are  partly  peculiar  to  it  and  partly  common  to 
myriads  of  others ;  nay,  some  of  its  forms  are  common 
to  all  plants  whatever.  Different  seeds  and  different 
soils  yield  different  plants,  but  all  have  the  same 
fundamental  substance  and  the  same  constituent 
forms.  A  speculative  botanist  extracting  these  com- 
mon forms  may  present  them  as  a  priori  condi- 
tions and  call  them  Nature's  innate  ideas ;  folio vvinor 
thus  in  the  track  of  speculative  psychologists.  The 
psychologist  admits  that  all  knowledge  arises  in 
experience,  though  not  all  out  of  it.  The  botanist 
admits  that  all  plants  arise  in  earth  or  air,  but  not  all 
out  of  them.  There  are  conditions  and  pre-conditions 
of  experience,  as  there  are  conditions  and  pre-condi- 
tions of  plant  life.  The  first  question  to  be  solved  is, 
AVhat  is  the  nature  of  these  ?  Is  there  an  archetypal 
plant  existing  somewhere  and  somehow  behind  the 
phenomenal  plants,  a  Soul  or  Spiritual  Principle  in- 
dependent of  the  living  organism  ?  or  is  there  an 
evolved  product — seed — organism,  which  in  a  given 
medium  will  continue  its  evolution  into  other  pro- 
ducts ?  It  is  not  less  certain  that  before  the  eye  can 
enter  on  its  function  of  seeing  under  the  required 
conditions,  there  are  required  pre-conditions  of  an 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY^  19 

optical  mechanism  and  a  sensorial  mecLanism,  than 
that  before  the  seed  can  enter  on  its  development 
there  must  be  added  to  the  conditions  of  soil,  atmos- 
phere, and  temperature,  the  pre-conditions  of  ances- 
tral adaptations  which  have  formed  protoplasm  into 
seed. 

BODY   AND   MIND. 

11.  The  fact  of  unconscious  intellectual  processes, 
no  less  than  of  unconscious  sensual  and  volitional 
processes,  carries  two  important  consequences.  First, 
it  disproves  the  notion  that  Psychology  can  be 
limited  to  the  facts  of  Consciousness ;  for  this  would 
exclude  the  greater  part  of  our  mental  life,  and  would 
imply  that  a  judgment  or  a  train  of  reasoning  was 
not  a  psychological  fact  when  it  passed  unconsciously. 
Secondly,  it  proves  that  Psychology,  the  science  of 
the  products,  cannot  be  divorced  from  Physiology,  \ 
the  science  of  the  conditions  of  production,  without 
excluding  all  the  processes  known  to  be  physiological 
and  known  to  be  unconscious.  The  two  studies 
represent  the  two  aspects  of  the  relation  between 
Body  and  Mind,  aspects  which  are  expressed  in  objec- 
tive and  subjective  terms.  Only  when  sentient 
activities  have  become  so  developed  that  a  conscious 
Ego  or  Personality  has  emerged  from  them,  which 
establishes  distinctions  between  one  class  of  feelings 
and  another,  can  this  famous  contrast  of  object  and  ^ 
subject  arise.  We  learn  to  distinguish  the  different 
parts  of  our  organism  and  their  different  activities; 
generalising  and  abstracting,  we  get  the  conception 
of  Body  representing  one  group,  and  of  Mind  repre- 
senting another. 


20  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

Once  formed,  these  abstractions  are  personified, 
considered  apart,  and  speculation  is  then  busy  trying 
to  discover  the  link  which  unites  them.  For  centuries 
men  have  puzzled  themselves  with  this  question.  If 
we  consider  the  genesis  of  the  Mind  as  revealed  to 
observation  and  induction,  we  see  that  at  first  there 
could  be  no  such  contrast  of  objective  and  subjective ; 
and  ^ven  now  there  are  numberless  indications  of  a 
mental  activity  only  recognisable  as  a  neural  process, 
hot  at  all  as  a  conscious  process. 

12.  Much  of  the  obscurity  arises  from  not  dis- 
tinguishing between  Sentience,  the  activity  of  the 
nQuro-mu«cular  system,  and  Consciousness  (in  the 
special  sense  of  Eeflectiou),  the  particular  Mode  of 
Sentience.  Thus,  we  are  commonly  said  to  be 
sensibly  afiected  by  an  impression,  but  not  to  have  a 
sensation  unless  we  are  conscious  of  this  affection  :  a 
simj)le  activity  of  the  sentient  mechanism  does  not 
suffice ;  there  must  be  a  special  addition  to  it  from 
some  other  mechanism — a  reverberation  from  some 
other  source.  In  this  view,  Sensibility  is  not  the 
vital  property  o^  tissue,  Sentience  is  not  the  function 
of  the  neuro-muscular  system,  but  is  the  activity  of 
the  Ego,  according  to  the  spiritualists ;  the  function 
of  the  brain,  according  to  the  physiologists. 

In  future  pages  I  shall  explain  how  both  physio- 
logically and  psychologically  it  is  we  who  feel,  and 
,not  any  particular  organ  ;  but  that  this  ive  means  the 
total  sensibilities  of  the  whole  oro-anism.  Meanwhile 
I  may  remark,  that  we  can  only  introduce  the  order- 
liness of  science  into  this  question  by  regarding  every 
sensorial  'afi'ection  as  sentient,  therefore  psychical ; 
and  every  such  afi'ection  as   capable  of  rising  into 


THE    STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  21 

conscious  afifection  when  the  conditions  of  relative 
distinctness  are  present.  The  great  mistake  is  trans- 
formingf  the  antithesis  of  conscious  and  unconscious 
into  the  equivalent  of  mental  and  physical.  How 
this  arose,  we  know.  Observation  having  detected 
the  mechanical  conditions  of  numerous  vital  actions, 
some  of  these  sentient,  Descartes  argued  that  animals, 
at  least,  were  mere  machines.  All  their  actions,  and 
many  of  our  own,  were,  he  said,  determined  by  purely 
mechanical  motors.  In  man  there  was  a  soul  which 
presided  over  the  machinery,  but  in  the  animal 
there  was  the  machinery  without  the  soul.^'"  I  tried 
in  my  previous  volume  to  show  that  this  paradox, 
which  startled  Europe  and  has  been  recently  re- 
vived, is  true  or  false  according  to  our  interpre- 
tation of  its  terms.  It  is  true  if  it  be  understood 
to  say  that  animal  actions,  viewed  solely  in  the 
light  of  movements,  must  be  rigorously  dependent 
on  mechanical  conditions ;  for  Mechanics  is  the^ 
science  of  Movement.  It  is  false  if  it  be  under- 
stood to  say  that  the  animal  actions  are  exclu- 
sively phenomena  of  Movement,  either  as  an  ab- 
stract aspect,  or  a*  identical  with  the  action  ,'of 
machinery ;  for  these  actions  are  chemical  and  vital, 
no  less  than  mechanical,  and  their  motors  involve 
the  co-operation  of  conditions  never  found  in  ma- 
chinery. ", 

*  "  Descartes  a  donnd  une  definition  metaphysique  de  I'ame  et  une 
definition  physique  de  la  vie.  Lame  est  le  principe  superieur  qui  se 
nianifeste  par  la  pensee,  la  vie  n'est  qu'un  effet  superieur  des  lois  de 
la  mecanique.  Le  corps  humain  est  une  machine  faite  pour  elle 
nieme  ;  Tame  s'y  ajoute  pour  contempler  en  simple  spectatrice  ce  qui_ 
se  passe  dans  le  corps,  mais  elle  n'intervient  en  rien  dans  le  fonctionne- 
ment  vital."  —  Cladde  Bernard,  La  Science  Experimentale,  1878, 
p.  15L 


22  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE    AND    MIND. 

13.  The  paradox  of  Descartes  was  useful  in  fixing 
attention  on  tlie  -operation  of  mechanical  conditions, 
which  had  been  too  little  regarded  ;  but  while  it  thus 
gave  definiteness  to  research,  and  enabled  men  to 
understand  spinal  reflexes,  it  was  injurious  in  its 
tendency  to  substitute  the  principles  of  inorganic 
machinery  for  the  principles  of  organic  mechanism. 
Hence,  when  a  large  class  of  actions  were  found  to  be 
effected  in  the  absence  of  the  brain,  and  were  assigned 
to  the  reflex  mechanism  of  the  spinal  cord,  it  was 
rashly  concluded  that  such  actions  were  due  to  purely 
mechanical  motors.  Sentience  was  excluded,  because 
that  was  assigned  to  the  brain  exclusively.  The  next 
step  was  to  conclude  that  since  these  spinal  reflexes 
were  often  performed  unconsciously,  even  when  the 
brain  was  present,  they  proved  Consciousness  not  to 
be  indispensable ;  and  Consciousness  and  Sentience 
being  taken  as  equivalent,  the  final  conclusion  was 
that  the  real  motors  of  such  actions  were  mechanical. 
The  spinal  cord  became  the  recognised  apparatus  for 
the  transmission  of  movement  and  the  production  of 
muscular  action,  but  not  an  apparatus  for  the  produc- 
tion of  sentience.  Because  it  was  demonstrably  the 
one,  it  was  denied  to  be  the  other.  That  it  might  be 
botli  was  not  considered.  It  acquired  the  title  of 
excito-motor  apparatus  ;  the  brain  being  the  sensori- 
motor apparatus.  But  I  have  seen  no  rational  grounds 
for  the  conclusion  that  one  part  of  the  central  nervous 
system  is  both  a  mechanical  and  a  sentient  apparatus, 
while  other  parts  similar  in  structure  are  only  mecha- 
nical. The  doubt  on  this  head  became  a  certainty 
when  observation  proved  that  not  only  had  the  cere- 
brum a  reflex  activity  of  the  same  kind  as  the  spinal 


THE   STUDY   OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  23  ' 

cord,  but  that  the  cerebral  reflexes  were,  like  the 
spinal,  sometimes  conscious,  sometimes  unconscious 
states.  Here  it  became  clear  that  the  antithesis  be- 
tween these  two  sentient  states  could  not  be  the  equi- 
valent of  the  antithesis  between  sentient  and  mecha- 
nical, in  the  sense  of  mental  and  physical ;  both  states 
were  mental  in  one  aspect  and  physical  in  another ; 
the  conscious  state  was  proved  to  be  also  mechanical, 
the  unconscious  state  was  proved  to  be  (in  some  cases 
avowedly)  mental.  We  had  no  grounds  for  degrading 
any  action  of  a  sentient  mechanism  from  the  psychical 
to  the  physical  sphere,  solely  because  it  might  pass 
unconsciously,  and  often  did  so ;  nor  could  we  refuse 
to  admit  the  mechanical  aspect  of  a  mental  state  when 
that  state  was  a  conscious  state.  Objectively  the 
vital  organism  is  an  apparatus  for  the  transmission  of 
motions,  molecular  and  molar.  In  this  view  all  its 
actions  are  mechanical.  It  is  also  an  apparatus  for 
the  composition  and  decomposition  of  substances.  In 
this  view  it  ceases  to  be  purely  mechanical,  and  be- 
longs to  Chemistry.  It  is  further  an  apparatus  for 
morphological  evolution  and  dynamic  consensus — the 
special  phenomena  classed  as  vital.  Thus,  even  on 
the  objective  side,  the  organism  is  more  than  an 
automaton ;  it  is  a  chemical  laboratory  and  a  vital 
system.  On  the  subjective  side  the  neuro-muscular 
system  gives  place  to  the  soul ;  its  actions  are  feelings. 
Here  there  can  be  no  question  either  of  Mechanics  or 
of  Chemistry.  The  phenomena  are  no  longer  move- 
ments and  decompositions.  They  imply  such,  and 
are  referred  to  such,  when  their  objective  expressions 
are  employed ;  as,  on  the  other  hand,  all  objective 
facts  are  finally  expressible  in  terms  of  Feeling — such 


n. 


24         PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND, 

terms  as  movement  and  decomposition  being  symbols 
of  our  sensible  affections. 

1 4.  While,  therefore,  we  emphasise  the  antithesis  of 
objective  and  subjective  aspects,  we  must  insist  on 
the  organic  state,  and  its  corresponding  meiital  state, 
as  the  antithetic  terms  for  one  and  the  same  fact. 
Their  separation  into  two  different  fjxcts,  and  the  con- 
sequent search  for  the  link  connecting  them,  we  must 
dismiss  as  illusory.  It  is  sustained  by  the  popular, 
but  erroneous,  view  of  the  relation  between  cause  and 
effect,  which  assumes  that  one  process  or  event  (named 
cause)  calls  into  existence  another  process  or  event 
(effect).  This  leads  to  the  metaphysical  puzzle  of 
-how  one  process  can  create  another  ?  According  to 
the  view  expounded  in  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind 
(vol.  ii.  Prob.  v.),  an  effect  is  the  causatum,  the  incor- 
poration of  the  causes  or  co-operant  conditions,  not  a , 
new  and  distinct  event.  That  is  to  say,  all  the  co- 
operant  conditions  which  may  severally  be  detected 
are  the  cause  when  viewed  apart  from  their  combina- 
tion ;  these  same  conditions  are  the  effect  wh"en  viewed 
as  a  resultant.  In  consequence  of  this  abstract  mode 
of  considering  them,  any  one  condition  is  often 
selected  as  the  cause,  and  any  one  detail  in  the  result 
as  the  effect.  But  in  reality  there  is  nothing  in  the 
effect  which  is  not  one  of  the  conditions  of  its  pro- 
duction ;  there  is  no  new  creation  either  of  matter  or 
motion,  only  new  combinations  of  matter  and  re- 
directions of  motion. 

If  this  be  so,  the  relation  between  cause  and  effect 
is  simply  the  relation  between  two  modes  of  viewing 
a  certain  event ;  and  this  also  is  the  relation  between 
organic  state  and  mental  state,  when  organic  state  is 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  25 

regarded  as  the  cause,  and  mental  state  as  the  effect. 
The  one  does  not  really  precede  and  call  into  existence 
the  other ;  but  the  one  is  the  objective  expression,  the  N 
other  the  subjective  expression  of  the  same  fact.  The 
organic  state  is  the  condition  viewed  objectively,  not 
the,  pre-condition.  i 

15.  After  this  statement  of  the  relation  of  Body 
and  Mind,  I  will  add  that  Psychology  is  somewhat 
less,  and  somewhat  more,  than  the  subjective  theory 
of  the  organism.  It  is  less,  because  restricted  to  the 
sentient  phenomena,  whereas  Physiology  embraces  all 
vital  phenomena.  It  is  more,  because  it  includes 
the  relations  of  the  organism  to  the  Social  Medium, 
whereas  Physiology  is  concerned  only  with  the  rela- 
tions to  the  Cosmos ;  and  the  many  and  profound 
modifications  which  arise  from  Experience  and  His- 
tory, educating  the  sentient  organism  to  react  in  new 
ways,  are  not  accessible  to  physiological  investigation. 
In  treating  of  the  human  soul,  we  have  largely  to  ad- 
mit the  influences  called  spiritual.  The  reader  under- 
stands thal^  by  this  term  I  mean  to  express  the  results 
of  Experience,  which  have,  indeed,  corresponding 
modifications  in  the  material  mechanism,  but  these 
correspondences  are  so  vaguely  assignable  that  we  do 
well  to  leave  them  unnoticed.  For  example,  we  are 
reading  a  somewhat  illegible  letter ;  physiological  pro- 
cesses are  of  course  in  operation  throughout,  but  no 
physiologist  would  attempt  to  explain  how  it  is  that 
we  combine  the  hints  of  the  several  signs,  and  divine 
the  meaning  of  each  word  by  its  context.  The  psy- 
chologist explains  it  by  reference  to  the  spiritual 
store  of  acquired  experiences  ;  the  signs  vaguely  and 
successively  suggest  words, — i.e.,  render  nascent  for- 


26  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

mer  experiences  ;  but  as  one  word  after  another  is 
suggested,  tlie  Mind  perceives  it  to  be  incongruous 
with  the  context,  and  rejects  it,  seeking  another,  till 
finally  one  is  suggested  which,  seeming  congruous,  is 
adopted.  Now,  physiologically,  i.e.,  considered  as  a 
neural  process,  one  word  fits  as  well  into  the  context 
as  another;  or,  to  speak  more  accurately,  there  is 
no  such  physiological  process  as  would  determine  the 
selection  until  the  context  of  Experience  has  modified 
the  organism,  and  it  is  this  which  the  term  "spiritual" 
indicates.  There  is  here  some  influence  in  operation 
which  would  very  imperfectly  be  indicated  by  the 
term  material ;  it  is  a  psychological  rather  than  a 
physiological  interpretation ;  and  although  the  term 
spiritual  was  first  used  when  men  conceived  the  soul 
to  be  a  spirit,  it  may  be  still  employed  now  we  have 
transformed  that  hypothesis.  When  some  mental 
anomaly  cannot  be  assigned  to  a  definite  lesion  of 
the  nervous  system  (neurosis),  pathologists  call  it  a 
psychosis,  as  if  it  were  a  lesion  of  the  unknown 
psyche.  In  the  same  way  the  normal  phenomena 
which  we  cannot  assign  to  definite  physiological  pro- 
cess are  called,  by  way  of  distinction,  psychological. 
This  only  means  that  our  knowledge  of  the  fact  is  not 
completed  by  knowledge  of  the  factor. 

No  physiological  explanation  of  mental  phenomena 
can  dispense  with  a  constant  reference  to  spiritual 
conditions  :  present  stimulations  have  to  be  completed 
by  past  experiences.  In  the  case  of  human  beings, 
the  experiences  are  complicated  by  the  operation  of 
social  influences  :  it  is  through  these  that  the  hiojhest 
powers  are  evolved.  The  conspicuous  mental  dif- 
ferences between  a  Goethe  and  a  Carib  cannot  be 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  27 

assigned  to  differences  in  their  organi-sms  and  functions, 
but  solely  to  tlieir  developed  faculties.  The  organism 
of  a  Goethe  in  the  social  medium  of  the  Carib  would 
constitute  a  very  superior  Carib,  but  not  a  wide-sweep- 
ing intelligence  with  a  sympathetic  conscience. 

FUNCTION   AND   FACULTY. 

16.  This  leads  me  to  suggest  a  more  marked  dis- 
tinction between  the  terms  function* and  faculty  than 
is  usual.  By  faculty  is  commonly  understood  the 
power  or  aptitude  of  an  agent  to  perform  a  certain 
action  or  class  of  actions.  It  is  thus  synonymous 
with  function,  whicli  means  the  activity  of  an  organ, 
the  uses  of  the  instrument.  I  propose  to  detach 
faculty  from  this  general  signification,  limiting  it  to 
the  action  or  class  of  actions  into  which  a  function 
may  be  diversified  by  the  education  of  experience. 
That  is  to  say,  let  function  stand  for  the  native  en- 
dowment of  the  organ,  and  faculty  for  its  acquired 
va-riation  of  activity.  The  hand  is  an  organ  with  the 
function  of  Prehension.  To  grasp,  pull,  scratch,  &c., 
are  its  inherited  powers.  But  the  various  modes  of 
manipulation  —  cutting,  sewing,  drawing,  writing, 
fencing,  &c. — are  faculties  acquired  by  intelligent 
direction  and  the  combination  of  other  organs.  In- 
stincts are  functions.  Emotions  are  functions.  Sen- 
sation and  perception  are  functions.  Logical  com- 
binations are  functions.  Some  functions  are  simple, 
others  compound ;  that  is  to  say,  some  are  performed 
by  single  organs,  as  vision  by  the  eye ;  others  by 
groups  of  organs,  as  Instincts  and  Emotions.  The 
co-operation  is  fixed  and  invariable.     It  is  otherwise 


28  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

with  the  co-operation  of  organs  in  faculties,  and  it  is 
because  of  this  that  the  products  are  both  optional 
and  variously  modifiable.  The  function  of  Prehen- 
sion becomes  the  varied  faculties  of  Manipulation  by 
a  variable  co-operation  of  organs;  the  faculties  of 
drawing,  of  writing,  of  musical  performance,  &c., 
demand  the  union  of  other  and  variable  element*. 
As  in  the  scale  of  the  animal  development  we  find 
an  increasing  complexity  of  organs  compounded  of 
simple  tissues,  and  of  apparatus  compounded  of 
organs,  so  we  find  faculties  which  are  compounds  of 
simple  functions,  and  faculties  again  compounded  of 
these.  We  say  of  a  man  that  he  has  '^remarkable 
faculty"  when  he  is  ready  to  adapt  himself  dex- 
terously to  a  great  variety  of  conditions,  and  to 
acquire  skill  in  new  operations. 

This  distinction  of  the  activities  which  are  fixed 
and  functional,  from  those  which  are  optional  and 
modifiable,  not  only  directs  attention  to  the  educable 
activities,  but  also  points  to  the  intervention  of  social 
influences.  Thus,  confining  ourselves,  by  way  of 
illustration,  to  the  functions  and  faculties  of  the 
hand,  we  see  the  irrationality  of  the  old  notion  which 
attributed  man's  superiority  to  his  possession  of  this 
organ.  The  ape  has  hands  very  like  man's,  and  these 
hands  have  the  same  functions  ;  but  the  ape's  faculties 
are  not  a  fiftieth  part  of  those  performed  by  the  hand 
of  man.  The  ape  is  dexterous,  and  learns  to  apply 
his  hands  in  various  ways  ;  he  might  be  taught  to  cut 
and  sew,  as  he  has  been  taught  to  break  an  egg  and 
fire  a  pistol.  But  no  teaching  could  make  him  write, 
draw,  play  the  piano,  &c.  Before  writing  would  be 
possible,    he  would  have  to  acquire  the   faculty  of 


THE    STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  29 

Lnngunge,  and  if  this  acquisition  were  possible  to 
him — which  it  is  not — he  would  need  the  further 
faculty  of  translating  sounds  into  symbols.'"'' 

Every  function  has  its  definite  organ  or  group  of 
organs.  It  is  their  constant  energy.  Every  faculty 
has  also  its  definite  group  of  organs,  but  it  is  their 
temporary  synergy.  Hence  the  irrationality  of  the 
attempts  to  localise  the  various  faculties  in  circum- 
scribed regions  of  the  cerebral  convolutions.  The 
faculty  of  Language,  for  example,  has  recently  been 
localised  in  the  third  convolution  of  the  left  hemi- 
sphere, in  entire  disregard  of  the  complex  of  functions 
which  Language  implies,  and  of  the  fact  that  Aphasia 
may  be  due  to  a  defect  of  Phonation,  of  Ideation,  or 
of  Memory  of  sounds. 


MECHANISM   AND   EXPEEIENCE. 

17.  It  has  already  been  intimated  that  Physiology 
concerns  itself  directly  with  the  sentient  Mechanism, 
tracing  its  operation  in  the  production  of  those  facts 

*  In  answer  to  the  notion  put  forward  by  Helvetius  that  man's  in- 
tellectual superiority  over  the  horse  was  due  to  the  fact  of  his  having 
flexible  fingers  in  lien  of  an  inflexible  hoof,  Bonnet  well  remarks  that 
Helvetius  "  n'avait  pas  consid^re  qu'un  animal  quelconque  est  un 
systeme  particulier  dont  toutes  les  parties  sont  en  rapport  ou  harmoni- 
ques  entre  elles.  Le  cerveau  du  cheval  r^pond  a  sa  botte,  comme  le 
cheval  lui-nierae  repond  kid.  place  qu'il  tient  dans  le  systeme  organique  ; 
si  la  botte  venait  a  se  convertir  en  doigts  flexibles  il  n'en  demeurerait 
pas  moins  incapable  de  generaliser  les  sensations  ;  c'est  que  la  botte  sub- 
sisterait  dans  le  cerveau  ;  et  si  Ton  voulait  que  le  cerveau  du  cheval 
Bubit  un  changement  proportionnel  k  celui  de  ses  pieds  je  dirais  que  ce 
ne  serait  plus  un  cheval,  mais  un  autre  quadrupede,  auquel  il  faudrait 
imposer  un  nouveau  num." — Palmgenisie  Philosophique^  quoted  by 
Gall. 


30  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

of  Sentience  which  it  is  the  special  province  of  Psy- 
chology to  investigate  as  facts  of  Experience.  Let  us 
see  how  these  terms  express  related  and  contrasted 
phenomena. 

Mechanism  sometimes  means  the  complex  whole  of 
interdependent  parts  which  constitute  the  organism, 
and  sometimes  the  particular  group  of  interdependent 
agencies  constituting  a  special  function.  In  the  latter 
sense  we  speak  of  the  -respiratory  -  mechanism,  the 
locomotive  -  mechanism,  the  reflex  -  mechanism,  &c. 
Psychologists  also  sometimes  speak  of  the  mechanism 
of  thought  or  of  volition ;  they  have  here  the  inter- 
dependence of  certain  psychical  states  in  view,  with 
or  without  explicit  reference  to  the  corresponding 
physical  states.  Both  uses  of  the  term  are  justifiable, 
since  what  on  the  objective  side  is  material  combina- 
tion is  on  the  subjective  side  spiritual  combination ; 
mechanical  and  logical  are  here  only  two  contrasted 
aspects  of  one  and  the  same  fact.  If  we  observe  a 
man  withdraw  his  arm  when  pinched,  all  that  we 
observe  is  the  mechanical  sequence  of  objective 
motions;  and  could  we  see  the  molecular  olianges 
in  his  nerves,  centres,  and  muscles,  we  should  still 
see  nothing  but  sequent  motions.  The  man  himself 
(or  we  ideally  picturing  his  internal  changes)  feels 
the  pinch,  and  Avills  the  movement  of  his  arm  ;  the 
sequence  of  sentient  states  involves  the  psychical 
mechanism. 

Understanding,  then,  that  in  these  pages  the  term 
mechanism  will  be  used  indifferently  for  the  objective 
or  the  subjective  aspect  of  the  organic  conditions  of 
production,  so  far  as  these  are  known  or  definitely 
imagined  as  fixities  of  structure  and  function,  let  us 


THE    STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  31 

now  pass  to  the  correlative  Experience,  wliicli  will 
often  be  employed  in  contrast. 

18.  A  preliminary  caution  may  not  be  needless. 
The  reader  is  familiar  with  the  tendency  to  personify 
every  abstraction,  erecting  it  into  what  S23inoza  calls  a 
res  completa.  Owing  to  this,  we  are  apt  first  to  divest 
an  object  or  event  of  all  the  special  conditions  which 
determine  it  and  constitute  its  reality,  and  then  to 
endow  this  abstraction  with  a  new  reality,  assigning 
to  it  qualities  not  given  in  the  original  res.  Hence 
the  popular  separation  of  Sentience  from  the  sentient 
Mechanism,  the  Subject  from  the  Object,  the  sentiens 
from  the  sensum,  and  the  erection  of  each  separated 
term  into  a  res  completa.  Logically  and  analytically 
the  distinction  is  useful.  But  its  danger  lies  in  this, 
that  Sentience  is  easily  conceived  acting  on  and 
directing  its  Mechanism,  as  Ave  direct  our  instru- 
ments. And  it  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  many 
writers  who  energetically  discard  the  fallacy  in  some 
forms  retain  it  in  others.  They  speak  of  the  mechan- 
ism, which  is  admitted  to  be  normally  set  going  by 
the  stimulus  of  a  sensation  or  an  idea,  as  capable  of 
also  acting  without  such  stimulation — by  insentient 
reflex — and  also  capable,  when  once  set  going,  of 
keeping  up  its  action  without  sentient  stimulation. 
This,  which  has  its  plausibility  in  the  confusion  of  the 
whole  complex  of  conditions  with  one  antecedent 
— whereby  a  single  incidental  force  is  made  to  stand 
for  a  whole  group  of  forces — would  never  have 
gained  acceptance  but  for  the  theoretic  separation 
of  Sentience  from  the  sentient  Mechanism,  and 
the  consequent  assimilation  of  the  organism  to  a 
machine. 


32        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

19.  Having  this  caution  before  us,  and  remember- 
ing that  all  psychological  processes  are  objectively 
organic  processes,  we  shall  understand  that  the 
mechanism  of  these  processes  may  be  expressed  in 
objective  or  subjective  terms  at  will,  sensorial  changes 
being  equivalent  to  sentient  changes.  We  now  in- 
quire what  is  meant  by  distinguishing  between  Expe- 
rience and  the  Mechanism,  so  as  to  speak  without 
ambiguity  of  Experience  directing  the  Mechanism. 
The  implication  is  that  the  one  is  to  some  extent 
independent  of  the  other,  and  that  the  latter  alone  is 
dependent  on  structure.  Neither  of  these  implica- 
tions is  correct,  but  they  roughly  represent  an 
important  distinction,  namely,  between  a  variable 
progressive  factor  and  an  unvarying  factor.  The 
Mechanism  means  the  visible  (or  intelligible)  fixed 
structure  with  its  corresponding  fixity  of  functions. 
Experience  means  the  modifications  and  fluctuating 
dispositions  of  structure,  with  the  corresponding 
variability  and  progressive  development  of  faculties. 
To  a  great  extent  the  Mechanism  is  connate.  Ex- 
perience is  acquired.  The  individual  organism, 
tliough  modifiable,  is  not  seen  to  acquire  new  organs, 
only  new  aptitudes.  Hence  the  constancy  of  type, 
the  fixity  of  functions.  So  long  as  the  organs  are 
subjected  to  uniformities  of  stimulation,  their  action 
is  of  course  unvarying.  Thus  the  nutritive  and  repro- 
ductive organs  present  the  constancy  of  machinery ; 
once  matured,  their  structure  never  sensibly  alters. 
It  is  otherwise  with  some  fluctuating  combinations 
of  the  Sensorium.  Subjected  to  varying  stimulations, 
and  combinations  of  stimulation,  it  acquires  new  apti- 
tudes, new  modes   of   response  ;  and  is  incessantly 


THE   STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  33 

modified,  if  not  in  its  elementary  structure,  at  any 
rate  in  the  fluctuating  disposition  of  its  elements.  It 
thus  forms,  as  it  were,  a  spiritual  mechnnism  super- 
added to  the  material  mechanism.  This  is  Experi- 
ence on  the  subjective  side,  and  is  equivalent,  on  the 
ohjective  side,  to  a  new  central  organ.  Our  principles 
imply  that  it  also  represents  a  pliysiological  modifi- 
cation and  a  corresponding  organic  modification  ;  but 
the  precise  nature  of  the  organic  modification  is  so 
entirely  hidden  from  our  present  means  of  detection 
that  we  shall  do  well  to  abstain  from  all  attempts 
to  specnfy  the  objective  fact,  content  with  our  clear 
apprehension  of  the  subjective  fact.  Thus,  for  ex- 
ample, while  Physiology  is  utterly  powerless  to  specify 
structural  and  functional  difi'erences  between  the 
savage  and  the  civilised  man  of  the  same  race,  Psy- 
chology easily  specifies  wherein  tlie  spiritual  organi- 
sation of  the  two  is  markedly  diff"erent.  Tliere  must, 
indeed,  be  corresponding  differences  in  their  organ- 
isms;  the  residua  of  past  feelings  which  constitute 
the  Experience  of  both  are  organic  modifications  ; 
but  what  these  are  we  cannot  guess.  No  anatomist 
could  pretend  to  discern  the  difference  between  the 
hand  which  executes  a  great  variety  of  delicate 
manipulations,  and  the  hand  which  has  acquired 
none  of  these  aptitudes  ;  but  every  one  can  recognise 
the  fact  of  the  superiority,  and  can  trace  it  to  educa- 
tion. No  anatomist  could  trace  the  modification 
which  has  taken  place  in  the  l.'rain  of  a  child  who, 
having  been  painfully  affected,  remembers  the  pain 
when  the  object  which  excited  it  is  seen  again.  AVe 
know  that  the  child  acts  differently  in  consequence  of 
this  experience  ;  but  that  is  all  we  know.     If  we  see 

VOL.  III.  c 


34  PROBLEMS    OF    LIFE  AND    MIND. 

a  motli  returning  to  the  flame  after  it  1ms  been  burnt, 
or  tlie  fisli  returning  to  the  bait  after  it  has  been 
torn  by  the  hook,  we  conclude  that  no  such  modifi- 
cation has  taken  place,  no  registration  of  Experience 
determines  a  control  of  the  primary  impulses. 

These  two  illustrations  show  how  the  oroanism 
reacts  on  stimulation  according  to  its  coamate  con- 
stitution, and  also  according  to  its  acquired  constitu- 
tion,— by  the  Mechanism  which  it  brings  with  it  as  a 
heritage,  and  the  Experience  which  has  modified  that 
heritage.  We  have  sensations  and  emotions  because 
the  sentient  mechanism  is  set  in  action  ;  when  these 
leave  behind  them  traces  in  our  constitution,  so  that 
on  any  fresh  excitation  the  past  feelings  are  revivable, 
we  have  experiences.  If  an  object  comes  within  the 
range  of  Sense,  we  feel  it,  i.e.,  we  react  on  the  stimu- 
lation in  virtue  of  our  native  and  acquired  mechanism. 
The  lower  animals  probably  never  get  beyond  this 
stage ;  but  the  plasticity  of  the  Sensorium  in  the 
higher  animals  permits  its  permanent  modification, 
so  that  impressions  are  grouped,  and  these  groups 
are  revivable  by  any  one  of  the  impressions,  and 
by  internal  excitation  : — they  feel  again  what  they 
formerly  felt,  and  their  perceptions  of  objects  are 
surrounded  b}^  an  atmosphere  of  quite  remote  feelings. 
This  is  Experience — the  psychological  mechanism.* 

21.  The  foregoing  considerations  have  made  evi- 
dent that  Physiology  and  Psychology  are  two  modes 
of  apprehending  the  phenomena  of  the  sentient  or- 
ganism, two  distinct  studies  (what  the  Germans  call 
Disciplines),  which,  nevertheless,  mutually  imply  each 

*  For  further  elucidation  of  fixity  and  variableness  iu  the  organic 
responses  see  77te  Ph>/sical  Basis  of  Mind,  p.  326  et  seqq. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  35 

otlier.  The  physiologist  has  sentient  facts  to  ex- 
plain, and  is  guided  by  them  in  his  interpretations 
of  the  organic  processes.  The  psychologist,  in  like 
manner,  has  always  to  presu[)pose  the  operation  of 
organic  processes,  since  these  are  the  conditions  of 
production  of  the  facts  he  is  classifying.  Both 
studies  are  very  immature,  and  this  immaturity  is  in 
no  slight  measure  owing  to  their  separation  ;  one  con- 
sequence of  the  separation  being  that  the  physiologist 
accepts  at  second-hand  the  itnperfect  theories  of  some 
psychological  school,  and  tbe  psychologist  accepts  at 
second-hand  the  imperfect  physiological  theories  of 
the  day.  There  can  be  no  satisfactory  theory  of  the 
functions  and  faculties  until  a  truer  classification  and 
theory  of  the  psychical  phenomena  has  been  estab- 
lished ;  nor  can  there  be  a  satisfactory  theory  of 
Mind  until  there  has  been  a  more  risforous  reduction 
of  mental  processes  to  biological  and  sociological 
conditions. 

This  position  may  be  illustrated  by  Mental  Patho- 
loQfv,  which  has  run  a  course  parallel  to  that  of  Mental 
Physiology.  Hippocrates,  a  great  observer,  whose 
vision  was  little  blurred  by  mists  of  metaphysics,  saw 
in  mental  maladies  abnormal  brain-action  ;  and  his 
immediate  successors  sought  in  abnormal  conditions 
of  the  organism  for  the  direct  causation  of  all  the 
forms  of  insanity.  But  during  the  reign  of  theo- 
logians and  metaphj'sicians  this  scientific  standpoint 
was  deserted,  and  mental  maladies  passed  from  the 
hands  of  physicians  into  the  hands  of  priests:  exorcism 
and  prayers  took  the  place  of  hygiene  and  prescrip- 
tions. The  theologian  regarded  insanity  as  demo- 
niacal possession.     The  metaphysician  regarded  it  as 


36  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

a  spiritual  perversion,  and  sometimes  as  a  want  of 
harmony  between  the  soul  and  its  "  instrument." 
Neither  doubted  that  the  soul  was  one  thiuo;  and  the 
body  another,  and  that  the  two  were  in  all  respects 
absolutely  dissimilar.  Even  so  late  as  the  present 
centurv  we  have  had  the  two  antagonistic  schools 
of  spiritualists  and  orgauicists,  the  one  referring 
insanity  to  disease  of  the  soul,  the  other  to  disease 
of  the  body.  In  Germany,  Heinroth,  long  regarded 
as  the  supreme  authority,  starting  from  the  dogma 
thnt  the  body  was  only  the  basis,  but  Reason 
[Vernunft)  the  principle  of  human  life,  declared, 
that  all  mental  abnormities  were  due  to  the  irrejiu- 
larities  of  Reason,  the  instigations  of  Passion.  In- 
sanity thus  became  the  symptom  of  Vice.  "Inno- 
cence is  never  insane,  only  guilt."  The  practical 
absurdity  of  this  theory  has  long  been  recognised. 
No  one  now  argues  with  a  demented  patient.  No  one 
thinks  of  curine:  mania  with  sermons.  The  existence 
of  a  cerebral  disease,  which  demands  the  physician's 
care,  is  now  the  universal  belief.  Mental  maladies 
have  taken  their  place  beside  bodily  maladies,  and 
have  become  a  subject  of  natural  science,  to  be  studied 
on  the  same  method  as  all  other  sciences.  The  obser- 
vation of  symjytoms  directs  the  search  into  ccmses. 
The  abnormal  function  is  referred  to  some  abnormal 
state  of  the  organism.  "  The  theory  of  mental  mala- 
dies," says  the  latest  writer  on  this  subject,  "embraces 
the  modifications  of  the  normal  mental  activity  by 
organic  diseases."  '"' 

The  parallel  runs  further.     Just  as  the  reaction  of 
the  organicists  against  the  spiritualists  has  led  to  an 

*  ScHiJLE  :  Handhuch  tier  Geisteshranhheiten^  187  5 


THE    STUDY    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.  37 

exclusive  attention  being  fixed  on  one  part  of  tlie 
organism  in  neglect  of  the  other  parts,  and  the  brain 
made  to  do  duty  for  the  whole  of  the  sentient 
mechanism — an  exclusiveness  which  has  furtlier  led 
to  the  assignment  of  psychical  functions  to  certain 
nerve  cells — so  the  alienists  have  followed  this  lead, 
and,  in  Sj)ite  of  daily  experience  contradicting  the 
theory,  have  declared  insanity  to  be  brain  disease  and 
nothing  else.  Even  Scliule  cannot  rid  himself  of  this 
preconception,  though  both  in  his  introduction  and 
in  the  body  of  his  work  he  gives  ample  evidence  tlmt  - 
its  exclusiveness  is  unwarrantable.  One  j^oint  which 
he  brings  forward  may  be  noticed  here,  because  it 
falls  in  so  well  with  the  views  I  advocate.  "  Mental  1 
maladies  "  (he  says,  p.  3)  "  are  cerebral  diseases,  but 
they  are  more  than  tbis."  The  Tnore  consists  in  con- 
ceiving the  patient,  not  simply  as  one  suffering  from 
cerebral  disease,  but  as  a  spiritual  being,  the  product 
of  former  generations,  so  that  his  ancestors  must  be 
taken  into  account  amono;  the  conditions  of  his 
psychical  symptoms.  This  recognition  of  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  product  of  his  race,  and  consequently  of 
the  individual  abnormities  as  determined  by  ancestral 
abnormities,  is  a  true  biological  standpoint ;  and  only 
needs  to  be  completed  by  the  sociological  standpoint 
which  regards  the  individual  mind  as  determined  by 
the  General  Mind  (see  §  118). 

If  the  changed  point  of  view  which  has  caused 
mental  maladies  to  be  studied  as  symptoms  of  organic 
maladies  is  approved  by  the  success  of  modern 
medical  treatment ;  if — and  no  competent  person 
can  have  the  slightest  doubt  on  this  point — our 
understanding   of  mental    maladies   is    only   to    be 


38  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE    AND    MIND. 

effected  by  this  union  of  physiological  interpretta- 
tion  with  clinical  observation,  it  is  obvious  that  a 
similar  Method  is  the  only  one  on  which  we  can  hope 
to  reach  an  explanation  of  the  normal  mental  actious. 

22.  The  task  of  the  future  is  plain  :  Physiology  ,^ 
must  trace  for  us  the  organic  conditions  of  the 
observed  phenomena,  explaining  the  sentient  func- 
tions by  the  sentient  mechanism.  It  must  study 
man  first  as  an  animal.  Psychology,  receiving  from 
the  hands  of  Physiology  a  theory  of  the  mechanism, 
must  from  Observation  and  History  trace  the  023era- 
tion  of  this  mechanism  in  the  functions  and  faculties 
which  spring  into  existence  through  its  adaptation  to 
the  Cosmos  and  Societ3\  It  must  study  man  as  a 
social  animah  History  discloses  the  stages  of  develop- 
ment, from  the  simple  emotions  and  conceptions  of 
rude  barbaric  social  states  to  the  ever-increasino^ 
complexities  of  civilised  states.  It  shows  how  an 
organism,  not  appreciably  changed  as  to  its  external 
structure  and  essential  mechanism,  acquires  in  its 
psychical  functions  a  predominance  of  the  human 
over  the  animal  characteristics,  as  sentiments  are 
evolved  from  emotions,  impersonal  impulses  from 
personal  impulses,  science  from  experience.  The 
animal  basis  is  never  forsaken  ;  the  social  super- 
structure is  never  wholly  deficient.  From  the  first 
hour  of  his  existence  man  is  a  social  unit  :  he  lives  in 
society,  is  mentally  developed  by  it  and  for  it. 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE    MOTIVE. 


23.  This  is  a  twofold  craving,  such  as  determines 
every  other  study,  a  craving  both  specuLitive  and 
practical.  As  a  speculative  craving  it  is  theological 
and  scientific.  An  undercurrent  of  theological  im- 
pulses  may  be  discerned  directing  the  inquiries  even 
when  the  avowed  aim  is  not  that  of  establishinof 
or  undermining  theological  conceptions ;  and  Mr. 
Collier,  in  a  valuable  essay  on  the  "  Development  of 
Psychology,'"  regards  this  theological  impulse  as  one 
of  the  two  factors  which  have  in  all  times  operated 
in  the  construction  of  the  science. 

24.  The  speculative  motive  is  that  of  ascertaining 
the  relation  of  the  sentient  organism  to  the  cosmical 
and  social  conditions  in  which  and  throuoh  which  it 
exists.  The  practical  motive  adds  the  further  aim 
of  modifying  our  impulses  and  adjusting  our  actions 
to  these  external  conditions,  or  modifying  these  con- 
ditions and  adjusting  them  to  our  needs.  The  true 
purpose  of  Knowledge  is  the  regulation  of  our 
Conduct.  The  end  and  aim  of  Life  is  Welfare — in 
its  most  abstract  expression.  Every  organism  shrinks 
from  what  is  disturbinor  and  disao^reeable,  and  clinos. 

*  Westminster  Review,  No.  cc. 


40  PROBLEMS    OF    LIFE    AND    MIISTD. 

to  what  is  in  harmony  with  it.  Action  is  a  neces- 
sity ;  all  that  is  in  our  power  is  the  direction  of 
activity,  and  this  is  momently  guided  hy  neural 
excitations,  and  by  sensations  which  are  pleasur- 
able or  painful.  Taught  by  these,  the  individual 
learns  to  direct  his  activities.  Enlarging  experi- 
ence develops  a  iorecasting  tendency,  germinal  in 
animals  and  savnges,  conspicuotis  in  the  civilised 
man.  Looking  beyond  the  immediate  conditions 
and  feelings,  this  tendency  prefigures  images  of 
possible  future  conditions  and  feelings,  whereby  the 
present  action  is  restrained  and  adapted  to  the 
anticipated  circumstances.  With  such  speculative 
vision  come  vasjue  nnd  ao^itatinor  imaocs  of  Invisible 
Powers  supposed  to  originate  all  visible  changes. 
These  grasp  the  soul,  and  force  it  henceforward  to 
attend  to  them  as  the  chief  of  all  external  con- 
ditions. To  them  it  is  felt  that  action  must  be 
adjusted.  If  they  can  be  discovered,  they  may  be 
modified  by  prayer,  sacrifices,  or  other  means  of 
intercession,  as  chiefs  and  potentates  are  propitiated. 
To  be  agreeable  to  them  by  flatteries,  self-sacrifice,  or 
the  sacrifice  of  others,  will,  it  is  hoped,  soften  their 
severities,  secure  their  favours.  In  this  abject  state 
the  majority  of  mankind  still  cowers. 

25.  But  there  are  dawn-streaks  of  a  brighter  day. 
Mental  development  has,  in  a  small  minority  which 
daily  enlarges  its  circle,  transformed  these  Invisible 
Powers  into  visible  Properties  and  intelligible  Ee- 
lations.  Fear  is  replaced  by  the  desire  to  know. 
Experiment  displaces  intercession ;  for  reliance  on 
prayer  is  substituted  obedience  to  ascertained  laws. 
The  hope  of  modifying   the  Invisible  by  ceremonies 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  41 

and  sacrifices  gives  way  to  the  hope  of  adapting  the 
properties  of  things  to  our  needs ;  and  where  this  is 
impracticahle  the  conviction  teaches  resignation  and 
the  eflfort  to  adapt  our  impulses  to  agencies  that  are 
inexorable.  The  scientific  attitude  is,  therefore,  one 
of  earnest  endeavour  combined  with  patient  sub- 
mission. It  no  more  hopes  to  modify  the  ordi3r  of 
Nature  by  litanies  and  ceremonies,  by  flatteries  and 
self-reproaches,  than  it  imitates  those  savages  who 
imagine  they  can  lure  the  fish  into  their  net  by 
shouting  its  praises  across  the  river  and  vociferously 
proclaiming  the  fish  to  be  a  mighty  chief. 

26.  Man  soon  found  that  knowledge  of  the  proper- 
ties of  things  was  not  the  only  important  object  of 
search.  He  a!so  found  that  iiis  own  personal  welfare 
was  not  the  only  aim  to  which  his  activities  should 
be  directed.  Man  is  by  his  constitution  forced  to 
live  for  others  and  in  others.  The  welfare  of  his 
family,  his  tribe,  his  nation,  and  at  last  the  welfare 
of  Humanity  at  large,  is  felt  or  discerned  to  be  inter- 
woven with  his  own  welfare.  His  life  is  part  of  a 
social  life,  aided  and  thwarted  by  the  needs  and 
deeds  of  fellow-men,  which  thus  become  external 
conditions  of  his  existence,  on  a  par  with  cosmical 
conditions,  and  must  be  studied  with  equal  solici- 
tude. Sf^ciety  is  far  more  modifiable  than  Nature ; 
and  its  Euling  Powers,  namely.  Passions,  Sentiments, 
and  Ideas,  may  be  modified  both  by  direct  appeals ' 
and  by  indirect  action  on  their  generating  causes. 
Much  of  this  modification  takes  place  spontaneously 
by  the  interaction  of  human  impulses  and  the  neces- 
sary subjection  to  external  fact.  The  conscious  efforts 
to  the   same   end  are   embodied  chiefly  in  two  oreat 


42  PROBLEMS    OF    LIFE    AND    MIND. 

Arts — the  art  of  Educcation,  whicli  applies  itself  to 
the  indiv^idual,  and  the  art  of  Government,  which 
applies  itself  to  society. 

27.  We  are  thus  conducted  to  the  practical  motive, 
the  importance  of  psychological  science  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  true  principles  of  Education  and  Govern- 
ment. As  society  develojDS,  it  shapes  itself  into 
fixed  Institutions  of  Religion,  Law,  Morality,  Science, 
and  Art — the  organs  of  Humanity  with  their  social 
functions.  Each  justifies  itself,  and  requires  no  other 
reason  for  its  continuance  than  that  it  ministers  to 
individual  needs  and  subserves  a  social  end.  When 
instituted,  Science  has  a  social  function,  and  pushes 
its  objects  for  its  own  sake,  with  only  a  remote 
reference  to  any  other  end  ;  although,  being  a  social 
function,  it  must  have  social  utility.  In  many  of  its 
researches  it  may  not  bear  on  its  face  any  other  use- 
fidness  than  that  of  furtherino:  the  welfare  of  the 
Intellect ;  but  that  usefulness  is  great,  not  indeed  for 
an  individual  considered  apart  from  society,  but  for 
society,  of  which  Intellect  is  the  servant. 

28.  The  growth  of  Intellect  out  of  Intelligence, 
that  is  to  say,  the  systematisation  of  experiences 
under  methodised  symbols,  we  shall  hereafter  trace 
as  a  purely  social  product.  All  cognition  is  primarily 
emotion.  We  only  see  what  iiiterests  us.  No  phe- 
nomenon is  interesting  until  it  is  illuminated  by 
emotion,  and  we  see,  or  foresee,  its  connection  with 
our  feelings.  Even  so  conspicuous  an  event  as  a 
crash  of  thunder  is  to  the  child  and  the  dos;  an  un- 
observed  event,  because  they  have  not  learned  to 
associate  with  it  any  change  in  their  own  lives ; 
whereas  to  the  developed  Intellect  the  remote  events 


THE   STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  43 

of  prehistoric  ages  or  the  possible  constitution  of  the 
stelkir  universe  are  of  thrilling  interest,  being  in- 
cluded in  the  wide  sweep  of  contemplative  emotion, 
or  satisfying  a  theoretic  activity  which  has  taken  on 
the  intensity  of  a  mental  hunger.  The  impersonal 
and  indirect  interest  replaces  the  personal  and  direct 
interest  of  the  uncultivated  mind.  Facts  which  can 
only  have  a  very  distant  bearing  on  the  lives  of  men, 
and  no  conceivable  influence  on  the  present  needs, 
apart  from  the  need  of  gratifying  the  Intellect,  are 
investigated  with  passionate  patience. 

29.  Thus  the  desire  to  understand  the  operations 
of  the  Mind  has  the  same  source  as  the  desire  to 
understand  the  operations  of  Nature,  whether  these 
are  or  are  not  recoonised  as  havins^  an  immediate 
practical  bearing.  The  intellect,  having  reduced 
external  plienomena  to  some  system  of  ideal  con- 
structions, endeavours  to  do  the  same  for  internal 
phenomena.  Cosmology  terminates  in  Biology,  and 
Biology  in  turn  terminates  in  Sociology.  Philosophy 
has  thus  all  the  materials  for  a  conception  of  the 
World,  Man,  and  Society. 

30.  But,  as  was  intimated  just  now,  speculative 
interest,  although  a  sufficing,  is  not  the  only  motive : 
practical  issues  are  at  once  desired  and  discerned. 
The  art  of  Education  is  to  Psychology  what  Hygiene 
and  Medicine  are  to  Physiology.  Educators  indeed 
have  rarely  recognised  this  relation,  but  have  pur- 
sued their  plans  in  an  empirical  and  traditional  in- 
dependence, very  similar  to  that  which  has  directed 
the  teachers  of  Medicine,  and  from  the  same  cause, 
namely,  the  great  imperfection  of  the  sciences  of 
Psychology    and   Physiology.     Hence   teachers  may 


44  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

dispute  the  suLordination  of  tbeir  respective  arts  to 
the  scieiices.  But  the  indisputable  fact  that  Educa- 
tion and  Medicine  have  hitherto  followed  their  own 
empirical  methods  without  much  regard  to  the 
sciences,  arises  partly  from  tbe  difference  between 
practice  and  theory,  art  and  science  ;  and  partly  from 
the  urgency  of  practical  application,  which  cannot 
await  the  final  results  of  research,  and  their  systema- 
tisation  in  abstract  principles.  The  child  has  to  \jq 
taught  and  the  patient  treated  according  to  the 
means  at  hand  ;  tutor  and  physician  must  be  guided 
by  such  light  as  he  has  ;  he  cannot  wait  until  science 
has  disentangled  from  the  mass  of  mingled  prejudice, 
precipitation,  ignorance,  and  knowledge  the  true  laws 
of  mental  and  bodily  life.  All  this  is  true.  Neverthe- 
less, it  is  likewise  true  that  both  tutor  and  physician 
have  been  guided  by  the  psychological  and  pliysio- 
logical  conceptions  current  in  their  time,  although 
supplementing  these  with  empirical  observations  and 
traditional  j^rejudices,  and  following  the  latter  even 
Avhen  they  were  irreconcilable  with  the  ascertained 
laws  of  science.  The  absurd  notions  respecting  the 
nature  of  the  mind,  its  simplicity,  autonomy,  inde- 
pendence of  the  organism,  and  its  equality  in  all  men, 
are  clearly  recognisable  in  the  current  j^ractices  of 
educators  ;  just  as,  formerly,  absurd  notions  respect- 
ing a  vital  principle,  and  the  nature  of  the  entity 
named  Disease,  directed  medical  practice. 

Once  recognise  that  Education  is  an  art  which  has 
its  scientific  basis  in  Psychology,  and  the  importance 
of  having  a  rational  and  verifiable  basis,  rather  than 
one  that  is  unverifiable,  becomes  obvious.  In  pro- 
portion,  therefore,  as  Psychology  acquires  scientific 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  45 

precision  its  influence  on  Education  will  become 
beneficent,  and  thus  also  an  improved  riiysiology 
will  lead  to  a  better  art  of  Medicine,  without,  in  either 
case,  removing  the  difficulties  belonging  to  each  prac- 
tical application  of  abstract  [)rinciples.  A  knowledge 
of  the  way  in  which  faculties  are  evolved,  impressions 
organised,  moral  and  scientific  intuitions  formed, 
habits  established,  and  the  structure  no  less  than  the 
furniture  of  tlie  mind  receives  its  individual  character 
from  the  silent  and  incessant  modifications  of  Expe- 
rience, will  make  parents  and  teachers  keenly  alive 
to  the  incalculable  importance  of  tlie  conditions  under 
which  the  early  years  of  the  child  are  passed.  AVho- 
ever  has  closely  studied  the  evolution  of  the  faculties 
will  see  the  folly  and  the  wickedness  of  leaving 
children  to  the  care  of  ignorant  servants  and  vulgar 
companions  at  a  period  when  impressions  are  most 
indelible, — a  period  \\hen,  as  we  know,  the  germs  of 
the  future  character  are  deposited.  If  out  of  the 
same  nursery,  the  same  schoolroom,  and  what  seems 
the  same  environment,  children  of  the  same  parents 
are  so  markedly  unlike  in  disposition,  talents,  tem- 
pers, it  has  to  be  considered  that  the  original  diffe- 
rences in  their  organisms  give  rise,  even  under  the 
same  circumstances,  to  a  difference  in  an  important 
element — the  individual  experiences.  To  gain  some 
glimpse  of  the  way  in  which  intuitions  are  esta- 
blished and  dispositions  formed  is  the  first  task  of 
parent  and  teacher. 

31.  Although  Government,  as  an  art,  belongs  more 
to  Sociology  than  to  Psychology,  it  Avill  necessarily 
derive  great  aid  from  the  latter.  For  one  thing,  it 
must  take  into  account  what  have  been  the  influences 


46  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE   AND    MIND. 

under  wliicli  the  actual  character  of  the  nation  has 
been  constituted,  and  what  are  the  relations  of  that 
character  to  theoretic  reforms.  Is  this  a  truism  ? 
Then  why  has  it  been  so  persistently  disregarded  by 
social  theorists  and  reformers  ?  The  idea  of  recon- 
structing society  otherwise  than  by  a  slow  process  of 
moral  and  intellectual  education,  fitting  the  members 
for  the  new  institutions,  is  not  less  preposterous  than 
the  idea  of  reconstructing  a  diseased  organism  other- 
wise than  by  the  slow  processes  of  regimen  and  phy- 
siological recuperation.  A  practical  renovation  of 
society  must  be  founded  on  the  existing  interests  and 
tendencies  of  its  classes  ;  an  abstract  theory  of  possible 
future  society  is  a  prophetic  vision  in  which  existing 
facts  are  disres^arded  or  transformed.  But  for  both 
the  practical  and  theoretic  purposes  a  knowledge  of 
actual  and  possible  human  motives  is  required,  and  a 
knowledge  of  psychological  laws  is  as  necessary  here 
as  the  knowledge  of  physical  laws  in  any  practical  or 
theoretic  efforts  to  modify  the  external  world. 

32.  Having  thus  stated  what  it  is  we  study,  and 
why  we  study  it,  the  final  question  how  we  ought  to 
study  it  remains,  and  this,  being  the  most  important 
of  the  three  questions,  must  have  fidler  treatment. 
As  a  preliminary  we  must  settle  the  position  which 
the  science  occupies  in  the  series  of  sciences. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    POSITION    OF   THE    SCIENCE. 

33.  Until  quite  recently,  universal  opinion  assigned 
Psycliology  to  the  special  group  of  Moral  Sciences 
which  were  held  to  be  diametrically  opposed  to  the 
Physical  Sciences,  both  in  the  matters  treated  of  and 
in  the  Methods  of  Inquiry,  Tlie  sciences  of  Human 
Nature  were  supposed  to  have  so  little  in  common 
with  the  sciences  of  Nature  that  their  loiric  and  means 
of  verification  were  different.  Men  believed  in  the 
co-existence  of  two  independent  orders  of  events, 
having  their  common  ground  in  a  world  beyond, 
namely,  the  Suprasensible, — which  as  dogma  was 
claimed  by  Theology,  and  as  science  by  Metaphysic. 
God,  Man,  and  Nature  thus  constituted  three  ob- 
jects of  knowledge,  accessible  through  three  different 
avenues. 

Physics,  the  study  of  Nature,  slowly  emancipated 
itself  from  Theology  and  Metaphysics,  and  was  suffered 
to  pursue  its  own  Method.  The  Moral  Sciences  con- 
tinued to  form  a  class  apart,  even  when  they  had 
so  far  emancipated  themselves  as  to  disengage  their 
special  object,  the  facts  and  laws  of  Human  Nature. 
This  Avas  followed  by  a  recognition  that  Man,  lieing  a 
part  of  Nature,  ought  to  be  studied  on  the  Method 


48         PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

wliicli  alone  bad  proved  successful  in  the  study  of 
Nature.  But  even  this  recognitiou  was  restricted  to 
the  bodily  functions  of  man  ;  the  old  bias  still  asserted 
itself  with  reo-ard  to  the  mental  functions.      Without 

O 

boldly  affirming  tliat,  as  a  thinking  being,  Man  was 
not  a  part  of  Nature,  philosophers  insisted  tliat 
Thouijht  had  nothino^  in  common  with  Nature  :  differ- 
ing  sui  generis,  it  could  not  be  amenable  to  the  same 
canons.  Tlie  scholastic  dofjma  tliat  Mind  was  ex- 
clusively  appropriated  by  the  theologian,  wliile  the 
Body,  with  all  its  sensible  affections,  was  handed  over 
to  the  student  of  Nature,'""  although  not  explicitly 
avowed,  was  implicitly  accepted. 

A  change  has  been  effected.  Among  advanced 
thinkers  it  is  now  unhesitatingly  tKlmitted  that  Mind 
is  a  form  or  function  of  Life  ;  consequently  that  the 
Method  pursued  in  the  investigation  of  vital  pheno- 
mena is  the  only  one  rationally  to  be  pursued  in 
mental  phenomena.  There  are  differences  in  the  ap- 
pliances, and  in  the  respective  proportions  of  observa- 
tion, experiment,  and  subjective  interpretation  ;  but 
for  all  sciences  there  is  one  common  Logic,  one  com- 
mon Method,  and  it  is  on  this  ground  that  the  growth 
of  j^hysical  science  has  fed  and  stimulated  the  growth 
of  ^psychological  science.  The  importance  of  this  ad- 
mission is  capital. 

In  an  essay,  already  mentioned,  on  the  development 
of  the  science  in  England,  Mr.  Collier  has  well  pointed 
out  how  the  progress  of  Psychology  has  been  aided  in 
all  its  stages  by  advances  in  the  physical  sciences.t 

*  Aquinas  :  Summd  Theologuc,  i.  qii.  Ixxv. 

f  Westminster  Hnv!eri\  No.  cc.  No  notice  is  taken  in  this  essay  of 
Cabanis,  Gull,  Hehuholtz,  and  Wuudt,  whose  labours  would  have  sup- 
plied good  illuatrations. 


THE   STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  49 

34.  Science  is  the  sjstcmatisation  of  our  experi- 
ences ;  it  is  Common  Sense  metliodised  and  gene- 
ralised. All  that  we  have  felt,  or  may  feel,  it  ranges 
under  two  aspects  :  the  subjective  and  personal,  the 
ohjcctive  and  impersonal.  Every  event,  every  feeling, 
has  this  twofold  aspect,  is  indissolubly  objective  and 
subjective,  according  to  the  mode  of  its  apprehen- 
sion. I  have  a  sensation.  This  is  known  to  be  a  state 
of  my  bodily  organism,  when  viewed  objectively ;  a 
state  of  my  mental  activity,  when  viewed  subjec- 
tively. I  may  so  far  detach  the  feeling  from  my  own 
personality  as  to  j^roject  it  outside  of  me,  and  regard 
it  as  an  object,  a  cause.  I  then  say  this  sensation  is 
a  flame,  a  colour,  a  form.  But  I  may  also  detach  the 
feeling  from  its  objective  aspect,  and  regard  it  solely 
as  a  change  in  my  consciousness.  By  this  artifice  of 
abstraction  the  indissoluble  reality  of  a  twofold  aspect 
is  overlooked,  and  each  being  separately  named,  comes 
to  be  regarded  as  an  independent  existence.  We  tli(  n 
cease  to  thiuk  of  objects  as  feelings.  Keflection  may 
convince  us  that  objects  are  groups  of  feelings,  all 
their  qualities  being  known  to  us  only  through  our 
sensible  appreciations,  or  our  symbolical  conceptions 
of  such  ;  but  whenever  we  see  or  think  of  objects  and 
qualities,  irresistibly  we  project  them  outside  our 
sphere  of  feeling,  and  believe  them  to  be  impersonal 
existences,  and  their  .qualities  due  to  their  nature, 
not  at  all  to  ours.  So  also  when  we  feel  a  sensation, 
or  think  of  one,  we  isolate  it  from  its  objective  as^Dect, 
its  real  cause,  and  believe  it  to  be  simply  a  move- 
ment of  our  spiritual  nature. 


VOL.  III. 


50  PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

OBJECTIVE   AND    SUBJECTIVE   LAWS. 

35.  These  abstractions  are  not  only  irresistible, 
they  are  eminently  serviceable.  Founding  on  them, 
we  divide  Science  into  laws  of  the  Object  and  laws 
of  the  Subject;  or,  in  other  words,  laws  of  Nature 
and  laws  of  Human  Nature.  The  first  embraces  Cos- 
mology and  Biology.  Facts  are  observed,  classified, 
ranged  in  order  of  sequence  and  subordination.  They 
are  explained  when  they  are  reduced  to  their  fiictors, 
their  conditions  of  existence.  They  are  summed  up 
in  abstract  formulae,  the  so-called  laws  of  Nature; 
which,  we  must  remember,  are  neither  sensible  exis- 
tences, nor  descriptions  of  such,  but  ideal  construc- 
tions, representing  the  constant  elements  of  the  vari- 
able combinations. 

The  second  group  embraces  the  laws  of  Human 
Nature  as  laws  of  the  Subject.  Beginning  with 
Psychology  and  ending  with  Sociology,  these  pre- 
suppose the  objective  laws,  as  the  laws  of  Nature  pre- 
suppose the  subjective  laws.  Biology  is  intermediate 
between  Cosmology  and  Sociology :  on  its  objective 
side  it  is  a  physical  science,  on  its  subjective  side  a 
moral  science. 

36.  These  two  contrasted  groups  are  often  thought 
to  be  separated  by  an  unbridgeable  gulf,  which  no 
dexterity  of  speculation  can  p9,ss.  Viewing  the  phe- 
nomena of  Nature  and  Human  Nature  objectively, 
we  can,  indeed,  range  tliem  in  an  ascending  series 
from  minerals  to  man,  and  from  individual  man  to 
society.  All  the  modes  of  existence  may  thus  be 
graduated  according  to  a  scale  of  complexity.  But  no 
sooner  are  these  same  phenomena  viewed  subjectively 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  51 

— that  is  to  say,  no  longer  as  modes  or  existences, 
but  as  suh'i'ects  or  existents, — than  a  sudden  break 
seems  to  occur  at  that  point  in  the  scale  where 
Forces  appear  as  Feelings.  I  mean,  that  between 
the  observed  actions  which  embody  forces,  and  the 
actions  which  embody  feelings,  there  is  no  objective 
difference;  tliey  are  both  expressible  in  terms  of 
Matter  and  Motion.  But  interpreted  subjectively, 
there  is  a  profound  difference,  resting  on  the  j^resence 
in  the  one  of  a  factor — Sensibility — which  has  no 
place  in  the  other ;  so  that  although  there  is  an  intel- 
ligible expression  of  Matter  and  Motion  in  terms  of 
Feeling,  there  is  no  such  intelligible  expression  of 
Feeling  in  terms  of  Matter  and  Motion. 

37.  Admitting  this,  and  emphasising  the  distinc- 
tion between  objective  facts  and  subjective  facts,  we 
nevertheless  recognise  that  the  observation,  classifica- 
tion, and  explanation  of  both  orders  must  proceed  on 
the  same  method.  The  laws  of  Human  Nature  are 
discoverable  in  the  same  way  as  the  laws  of  Nature. 
Physicists  have  reduced  all  objective  phenomena  to 
laws  of  Motion  and  one  general  conception  of  Force, 
measuring  all  diversities  by  one  standard.  They  pos- 
tulate one  Force  having  many  Modes,  and  one  Law  of 
Conservation  eml)racing  all  these  Modes.  We  cannot 
know  whether  this  conception  accurately  expresses 
the  reality  of  Nature  ;  enough  that  it  expresses  the 
objective  relations  for  us,  and  in  a  way  which  admits 
of  calculation.  The  unity  assigned  to  the  physical 
forces  is  quantitative  only — a  standard  of  measure- 
ment applied  to  the  phenomena  objectively — not  a 
qualitative  expression  of  their  nature  as  both  objec- 
tive and  subjective.     By  a  corresponding  artifice  all 


52  PROBLEMS   OP   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

the  subjective  aspects  of  plienomena  may  be  reduced 
to  Feeling  ;  and  if  we  can  establish  general  laws  of 
Feeling,  they  will  pair  off  with  the  objective  laws  of 
Force. 

38.  Such  metaphysical  considerations  need  not  here 
be  developed.  Our  point  is  that  the  Logic  of  Science 
remains  unaltered  whether  the  events  be  expressed  in 
objective  or  in  subjective  terms.  A  sensation  or  a 
thought  is  alternately  viewed  as  a  physical  change  or 
as  a  mental  change.  It  is  usually  classed  among  sub- 
jective facts,  but  this  does  not  discharge  it  from  the 
objective  world;  it  only  specifies  the  aspect  in  which 
we  contemplate  it.  Consider  this  contrast :  the  law 
of  gravitation  and  the  law  of  diffusion  are  undeniably 
laws  of  the  object,  and  are  sharply  contrasted  with 
the  law  of  association,  which  is  not  less  undeniably 
a  law  of  the  subject.  Every  one  will  declare  the  first 
to  be  laws  of  Matter,  and  the  second  a  law  of  Mind. 
Why  ?  Because  in  the  one  case  our  interest  is  so 
directed  to  the  objective  relations  that  the  subjective 
aspect  is  left  out  of  account,  and  the  laws  are  pre- 
sented as  if  independent  of  the  mind  which  conceives 
them — a  view  manifestly  erroneous  ;  and  in  the  other 
case  it  is  the  subjective  aspect  which  interests  us  ;  we 
think  only  of  the  associated  feelings,  and  not  of  the 
external  facts  they  embody,  not  of  the  neural  pro- 
cesses which  are  their  physical  correlates. 

Parenthetically  we  may  note  a  double  fallacy 
arising  from  this  isolation  of  one  aspect  from  the 
other.  First,  there  is  the  conviction  that  the  pheno- 
mena, which  are  demonstrably  the  part  products  of 
our  Sensiljility,  do  nevertheless  exist  with  all  their 
sensible  qualities  where  no  Sensibility  is  present  to 


THE    STUDY    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.  53 

co-operate  with  them.  This  fallacy  has  long  been  recog- 
nised by  philosophers,  who  have  not,  however,  always 
recognised  the  second  fallacy,  namely,  that  ideas  can 
associate,  and  one  mental  state  produce  another,  in 
the  absence  of  organic  states,  solely  by  virtue  of  sub- 
jective activity.  This  is  equivalent  to  supposing  one 
motion  to  produce  another  by  purely  dynamic  in- 
fluence, in  the  absence  of  moving  bodies  and  the  con- 
ditions of  movement.  Yet  this  fallacy  we  shall  find 
even  Stuart  Mill  falling  into  {§  42). 

To  return  to  the  law  of  gravitation.  Obviously  it 
might  be  regarded  as  a  subjective  law,  and  that  of 
association  as  an  objective  law,  if  our  point  of  view 
chanoed.  The  facts  observed  and  classified  are  neces- 
sarily  perceptions  in  the  observer,  and  the  law  whicli 
formulates  these  observations  is  indubitably  an  ideal 
construction  which  has  no  objective  reality.  Both 
laws — that  of  gravitation  and  that  of  association — are 
symbolical  conceptions,  and  what  they  symbolise  are 
states  of  Feelino;.  If  we  think  of  them  in  this  lidit, 
they  are  both  psychological  facts.  If  we  think  of 
them  objectively,  the  one  is  a  mathematical  the  oiher 
a  physiological  fact. 

39.  So  much  on  the  general  question.  Biology 
presents  it  in  a  peculiar  light,  for  here  for  the  first 
time  the  twofold  aspect  of  phenomena  becomes  con- 
spicuous, our  interest  in  the  subjective  side — that 
of  Feeling — being  as  great  as  our  interest  in  the  ob- 
jective side — that  of  Force.  It  takes  its  undeniable 
place  among  the  objective  sciences,  for  although  vital 
phenomena  are  special,  they  are  specialisations  of  the 
general  properties  of  Matter,  and  are  expressible  in 
terms  of  Force.      It  also  takes  its  place  among  the 


54         PEOBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

subjective  sciences,  since  its  phenomena  include  those 
of  Mind.  In  its  evolution  it  passes  from  Vegetality 
to  Animality,  and  through  Animality  to  Humanity. 
With  Animality  a  new  factor,  Sensibility,  becomes 
conspicuous.  With  Humanity  another  factor  emerges 
— Sociality.  Although  the  facts  of  animal  and  hu- 
man life,  so  far  as  they  are  objectively  regarded,  are 
expressible  in  terms  of  Force,  they  are  usually  ex- 
pressed in  terms  of  Feeling ;  and  hence  the  long 
debates  respecting  the  true  position  of  Psychology 
amonof  the  sciences  :  some  writers  consider  it  a  branch 
of  Biology,  others  detach  it,  and  assign  it  a  place  by 
itself. 

My  own  opinions  on  this  question  have  so  often 
fluctuated  that  I  cannot  be  insensible  to  the  difiicul- 
ties  it  presents.  I  shall  best  make  the  reader  ac- 
quainted with  my  final  decision  by  examining  the 
arguments  of  three  thinkers  with  whose  general  prin- 
ciples I  am  most  in  agreement. 

THE   VIEWS    OF   COMTE,    MILL,    AND   SPENCER. 

40.  Because  Auguste  Comte  contemptuously,  and, 
as  I  think,  erroneously,  rejected  the  Introspective 
Method,  and  because  he  denied  a  place  among  the 
fundamental  sciences  to  a  Psychology  pursued  on 
that  method,  he  has  frequently,  and  with  manifest 
injustice,  been  accused  of  denying  that  there  could  be 
any  science  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  functions. 
Assuredly  he  never  thought  of  denying  nor  of  under- 
rating psychological  facts,  and  the  laws  of  such  facts ; 
what  he  asserted  was  that  such  facts  were  wholly 
biological  facts,  and  were  to  be  investigated  as  such. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  55 

No  one  has  made  this  charge  against  Kant ;  yet  he 
also  denied  that  Psychology  could  be  an  independent 
science.  He  referred  its  facts  to  a  Transcendental 
Logic,  as  Comte  referred  them  to  Biology  ;  when  he 
quitted  this  transcendental  region,  it  was  to  refer  the 
facts  to  Anthropology. 

I  ao^ree  with  those  who  consider  Comte  wronoj  in 
his  rejection  of  Introspection  ;  and  liis  error  becomes 
more  conspicuous  in  his  exposition  of  a  cerebral 
theory  (Politique  Positive,  i.  675,  et  seqq.)  founded 
avowedly  on  subjective  analysis,  which  is  carried  so 
far  that  even  the  position  of  the  imaginary  "  organs  " 
is  not  determined  objectively.  Apart  from  this,  how- 
ever, I  think  him  justified  in  proclaiming  that  a 
theory  of  the  moral  and  intellectual  functions  can 
only  belong  to  a  theory  of  the  organism  ;  therefore 
that  Psychology  is  a  branch  of  Biology. 

41.  Stuart  Mill  erred  on  the  opposite  side.  Lay- 
ing the  chief  emphasis  on  the  subjective  aspect,  and 
consequently  on  the  Introspective  Method,  he  was 
thereby  led  to  separate  Psychology  from  Biology,  not 
as  species  from  genus,  but  as  two  radically  different 
kinds.  The  existence  of  uniformities  of  succession 
among  states  of  mind,  which  could  be  ascertained  by 
observation  and  experiment,  proved  that  a  separate 
science  of  such  states  was  possible  ;  and  he  main- 
tained that  the  only  mode  of  studying  these  must 
be  Introspection,  because,  although  sensations  have 
nervous  states  for  their  immediate  antecedents,  and  it 
is  probable  that  all  mental  states  have  nervous  states 
preceding  tliem,  yet  we  are  so  imperfectly  acquainted 
with  the  characteristics  of  these  nervous  states  that 
"mental  phenomena  do  not  admit  of  being  deduced 


56  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE    AND    MIND. 

from  the  physiological  laws  of  our  nervous  organi- 
sation "  (Logic,  6th  ed.,  ii.  432). 

Had  Mill  been  better  acquainted  with  Physiology, 
he  would  have  known  that  many  mental  phenomena 
have  been  deduced  from,  and  many  more  illuminated 
by,  the  laws  of  our  nervous  organisation  ;  and  this, 
indeed,  must  necessarily  be  the  case  if  organic  state 
and  mental  state  are  but  different  aspects  of  one  and 
the  same  process.  But  Mill  had  no  clear  conception 
of  this.  On  the  contrary,  he  adopted,  and  insisted  on, 
the  common  mistake  of  regarding  the  neural  process 
as  the  antecedent  and  originator  of  the  mental  process. 
I  have  already  characterised  this  as  equivalent  to 
regarding  the  convex  of  a  curve  as  the  antecedent  to 
its  concave.  To  disengage  it  from  an  ambiguity,  we 
may  note  that  there  are  neural  processes  which  may 
be  thus  regarded ;  for  example,  the  process  of  retinal 
stimulation,  which  is  the  first  stage  of  a  complex  pro- 
cess, the  final  stage  of  which  is  a  visual  sensation, 
may  be  said  to  be  the  antecedent  of  the  visual  sensa- 
tion, and  it  may  be  called  into  existence  without 
being  completed  by  the  final  stage  of  sensorial  reaction 
called  vision.  But  it  is  not  this,  nor  such  as  this, 
which  is  meant  when  a  neural  pr  'ss  or  organic  state 
is  called  the  physical  correlate  of  a  mental  state  :  not 
this  isolated  stage,  but  the  completed  synthesis  is  the 
cause,  or  group  of  conditions,  of  the  mental  product. 
Any  antecedent  which  is  merely  a  pre-condition,  or 
an  isolated  condition,  can  only  represent  the  cause  by 
an  ellipsis. 

42.  But  the  point  of  view  here  indicated  Mill  had 
apparently  never  taken.  "  All  states  of  mind,"  he 
says,  "  are  immediately  caused  either  by  other  states 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  57 

of  mind  or  by  states  of  body."  This  distinction  im- 
plies that  he  imagined  some  mental  states  to  exist 
which  were  not  at  the  same  time  states  of  body.  Of 
what  then  were  they  states  ?  He  did  not  believe  in 
the  existence  of  a  spirit  animating  the  body  ;  yet  such 
a  belief  would  have  given  consistency  to  his  views. 
To  reoard  Mind  as  a  function  of  the  oro^anism,  and 
yet  suppose  that  some  mental  functions  had  no  or- 
ganic conditions,  was  a  strange  incongruity.  States 
of  mind  are  always  caused  by  states  of  mind,  and 
these  are  states  of  body  when  viewed  objectively. 
He  says,  "  When  a  state  of  mind  is  produced  by  a 
state  of  mind,  I  call  the  law  concerned  in  the  case  to 
be  a  law  of  mind."  Good  :  when  the  subjective 
aspect  of  the  process  is  considered,  the  law  is  psycho- 
logical. But  he  adds,  "  When  a  state  of  mind  is 
produced  directly  by  a  state  of  body,  the  law  is  a  law 
of  body,  and  belongs  to  physical  science;"  and  here 
there  is  a  confusion.  The  production  is  always 
directly  a  state  of  body ;  but  is  a  physiological  law, 
when  viewed  as  a  change  in  the  organism,  a  psycho- 
logical law  when  viewed  as  a  change  in  feeling  ?  The 
point  of  view  is  different  in  the  two  cases,  the  event 
is  the  same.  Take,  for  example,  a  melancholy  mood  : 
it  is  a  mental  state,  and  its  law  psychological,  when 
considered  subjectively,  and  its  cause  referred  to  dis- 
appointed affection  or  a  fall  in  the  Funds ;  the  condi- 
tions here  are  all  psychological  experiences  in  which 
not  a  thouo-ht  is  oiven  to  the  oro;anic  conditions.  But 
this  same  mood  is  also  a  state  of  the  organism,  and 
considered  objectively  it  is  a  change  in  the  secretions, 
and  an  alteration  of  nervous  level ;  the  sequences  are 


58  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

in  this  case   as  exclusively  physiological   as  in  the 
other  they  are  psychological. 

43.  Thrown  off  the  track  by  his  misleading  con- 
ception, Mill,  while  declaring  that  all  sensations 
manifestly  belong  to  the  body,  thought  it  an  open 
question  whether  other  mental  states  were  thus  de- 
pendent on  neural  states.  Without  positively  affirm- 
ing it,  he  said  it  was  rational  to  assume  that  ideas — 
unlike  sensations — "  might  be  recalled  in  virtue  ol" 
mental  laws  which  are  independent  of  material  con- 
ditions." I  regret  that  my  attention  had  not  been 
directed  to  this  passage  during  the  years  when  it  was 
my  happiness  to  be  in  friendly  intimacy  with  this 
distinguished  philosopher,  so  that,  by  questioning,  I 
might  have  ascertained  all  he  really  meant  by  a  state- 
ment which  seems  so  very  questionable.  The  only 
interpretation  by  which  it  may  be  plausibly  supported 
seems  this  :  we  know  that  a  perception  gained  origi- 
nally through  sensible  affections  may  be  reproduced 
in  the  fainter  form  of  an  image  when  none  of  the 
sense-organs  are  directly  stimulated ;  this  reproduc- 
tion is  thus  apparently  independent  of  the  neural 
processes  which  produced  it  originally,  and,  being 
thus  regarded  irrespective  of  such  processes,  is  held 
to  be  a  psychological,  not  a  physiological  fact.  But 
observe  :  both  the  original  production  and  the  sub- 
sequent reproduction  are  activities  of  the  organism, 
and  imply  organic  states,  known  or  uoknown.  These 
states  are  not  precisely  the  same  in  the  two  cases, 
neither  are  the  mental  facts — sensation  and  image — 
precisely  the  same.  We  cannot  fairly  call  the  one 
state  bodily  and  the    other   mental,   simply  on  the 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  59 

ground  that  in  the  one  case  we  can  assign  certain 
definite  conditions  of  stimulation  of  the  sense-organs, 
whereas  in  the  other  case  we  can  only  vaguely  assign 
certain  changes  in  the  Sensorium.  The  fact  that  we 
can  have  coloured  sensations  internally  excited  years 
after  the  eyes  which  originally  excited  the  sensations 
are  destroyed,  is  evidence,  indeed,  that  the  Sensorium, 
and  not  the  eyes,  is  the  seat  of  the  sensations,  but  is 
no  evidence  that  the  sensations  are  bodily  states  in 
one  case  and  mental  states  in  the  other.  _^ 

In  a  word,  to  speak  of  "mental  laws  independent 
of  material  conditions"  is  legitimate  on  the  part  of  a 
spiritualist,  but  is  hopeless  confusion  on  the  part  of 
any  one  who  believes  Mind  to  be  a  function  of  the 
organism.  It  is  true  that  the  mental  laws  are  often 
known  where  the  material  conditions  are  unsuspected, 
or  are  but  hypothetically  assigned ;  and  the  scientific 
principle  that  we  are  to  explain  the  facts  by  reference 
to  known  and  not  to  unknown  conditions  determines 
our  frequent  disregard  of  the  physiological  for  the 
psychological  point  of  view.  Another  reason  for 
this  procedure  is  that  Physiology  being  occupied 
with  the  Mechanism  and  its  functions  mainly  in  rela- 
tion to  external  Nature,  and  Psychology  mainly  with 
Experience  and  the  faculties,  which  admit  of  more 
intelligible  expression  in  subjective  terms,  *'  the  ma- 
terial conditions"  are  so  constantly  left  out  of  sight, 
because  always  presupposed,  that  **  mental  laws"  seem 
to  acquire  an  independence. 

44.  In  Mr.  Spencer's  exposition  we  have  quite  other 
arguments  to  meet.  He  has  so  luminously  expounded 
how  Mind  is  evolved  as  one  of  the  forms  of  Life,  that 
we  might  expect  him  to  be,  above  all  men,  ready  to 


60  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND, 

admit  that,  in  so  far  as  mental  functions  are  functions 
of  the  nervous  system,  Psychology  must  be  correlated 
with  the  Physiology  of  that  system,  and  in  so  far  as 
Mind  is  a  function  of  the  living  organism,  the  science 
of  Mind  must  be  a  branch  of  the  general  science  of 
Life.  Yet  we  find  him  admitting  this  only  in  a  quali- 
fied way.  He  detaches  the  functions  of  the  nervous 
system  under  the  title  of  ^stho-Physiology,  as  form- 
ing only  the  preparatory  conditions  of  Psychology, 
not  properly  belonging  to  it.  *'  So  long  as  we  state 
facts  of  which  all  the  terms  lie  within  the  organism, 
our  facts  are  morphological  or  physiological,  and 
in  no  degree  psychological."  This  is  in  accord  with 
what  we  have  previously  laid  down.  Our  difference 
begins  at  the  next  step,  where  he  concludes  that  a 
change  in  the  point  of  view  alters  the  character  of 
the  events,  and  that  psychological  facts  cease  to  be 
facts  of  the  organism  when  they  are  viewed  subjec- 
tively. His  definition  of  psychological  is  not  the 
subjective  aspect  of  a  process  which  objectively  is 
physiological,  but  "  the  relation  between  a  neural  pro- 
cess and  a  feelinor  when  resjarded  in  connection  with 
some  existence  lying  outside  the  organism."  '"' 

So  great  a  thinker  has  clearly  a  right  to  introduce 
a  new  definition,  and  carry  out  his  exposition  accord- 
ingly. But  readers  who  remain  unconvinced  may 
be  allowed  to  state  why  they  cannot  accept  his  defi- 

*  Spencer:  Psychology/,  i.  131,132.  It  may  interest  the  reader 
familiar  with  Mr.  Spencer's  work  to  note  the  coincidence  between  his 
definition  and  that  given  by  Carus  in  his  Vergleichende  Psychologie, 
1866  ;  because,  wliile  it  is  quite  certain  that  Mr.  Spencer's  worlc  ap- 
peared first,  there  is  no  trace  of  Carus  having  seen  it.  He  defines  the 
soul :  "  Eine  in  derselbeu  als  Empfindendes  und  Gegenwirkendes,  bald  . 
leidend,  bald  tliatig  sich  bewei.sende  Beziehung  auf  ein  Aeusseres  zum 
Zweck  ihrer  eiiienen  iniieru  Ausbilduug  und  Entwicklung." 


THE   STUDY   OP   PSYCHOLOGY.  61 

nitlon.  I  am  unable  to  see  the  propriety  of  separating 
(otherwise  than  as  an  analytical  artifice)  the  facts  of 
Feeling  from  their  organic  conditions ;  unable  to  see 
why  Psychology  should  be  restricted  to  those  facts  of 
Feeling  which  are  explicitly  recognised  as  in  relation 
to  external  objects.  He  has  previously  admitted  that 
neural  process  and  sentient  process  are  two  aspects  of 
the  same  fact,  but  when  he  argues  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  understand  how  the  two  are  related,  this 
alleged  impossibility  is  made  to  rest  on  the  concep- 
tion of  a  phenomenon  being  something  apart  from  its 
conditions,  instead  of  its  being  (as  I  formerly  tried 
to  prove)  simply  the  synthesis  or  function  of  the  con- 
ditions. If  we  once  admit  that  a  change  in  Feeling 
follows  on  and  flows  out  of  its  organic  process,  as 
one  event  follows  another,  and  an  explosion  succeeds 
the  spark,  then  indeed  the  mystery  of  Feeling  as 
related  to  organic  process  presses  on  us  with  unique 
impenetrability  :  such  a  transubstantiation  is  incon- 
ceivable. But  the  alternation  of  objective  and  sub- 
jective aspect,  if  it  does  not  dissipate  the  mystery,  at 
least  resolves  it  into  the  general  background  of  dark- 
ness w^hich  for  our  vision  surrounds  all  ultimate 
facts. 

45.  The  reader  may  have  noticed  that  in  the  fore- 
going paragraph  the  terms  organic  and  neural  are 
used  interchangeably.  The  reason  of  this  will  appear 
in  a  subsequent  place,  where  an  explanation  will  be 
given  of  how  the  nervous  system,  or  the  neuro- 
muscular system,  comes,  in  the  short-hand  of  exposi- 
tion, to  be  the  representative  of  the  sentient  mechan- 
ism. If  we  take  the  term  "  neural  process  "  to  stand 
simply  for  the  molecular  change  in  nerve  and  centre, 


62  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

and  not  as  representing  a  change  in 'the  whole  sentient 
organism,  then  indeed  a  neural  process  is  the  ante- 
cedent to  a  feeling,  the  spark  which  precedes  the 
explosion  ;  and  in  this  sense  it  is  absurd  to  regard 
neural  and  mental  as  convex  and  concave.* 

46.  There  is  another  light  also  in  which  Mr. 
Spencer's  definition  seems  to  me  unacceptable.  When 
he  says  that  every  psychological  proposition  is  neces- 
sarily compounded  of  two  propositions,  of  which  one 
concerns  the  object,  and  the  other  the  subject,  we 
may  reasonably  answer  that  every  proposition  what- 
ever implies  both.  He  has  foreseen  the  objection 
which  must  spontaneously  present  itself  to  all  read- 
ers who  have  followed  his  exposition  of  Life  as  the 
"  continuous  adjustment  of  inner  relations  to  outer 
relations,"  and  who  will  therefore  ask,  wherein  is  the 
difference  in  this  respect  between  biological  and  psy- 
chological phenomena  ?  His  reply,  that  in  Biology 
the  external  phenomena  are  only  tacitly  or  occasion- 
ally recognised,  in  Psychology  they  are  at  every  step 
avowedly  and  distinctly  recognised,  is  hardly  an 
accurate  statement.  True,  that  in  Biology  the  atten- 
tion is  very  often  directed  mainly  to  the  organism, 
with  only  a  tacit  implication  of  its  relations  to  the 
medium.  But  this  is  equally  true  in  Psychology, 
the  attention  being  often  occupied  with  the  changes 


*  This  felicitous  image  of  the  convex  and  concave,  first  employed  by 
Fechner  for  the  objective  and  the  subjective  aspects,  may  have  been 
suggested  by  a  passage  in  Aristotle  which  one  very  near  and  dear  to 
me  has  brought  under  my  notice: — A^yerai  5^  nepl  ai^r^y  i'^^V^)  •  .  .  rb 
p.kv  AXoyov  avTTJi  dvai,  rb  bi  X6701'  ^x<"'.  ravra  d^  Trdrepov  SiwpiffTaL  Kuddwep  ri 
ToO  ci.ip.aTos  fxbpia  Kal  wav  t6  p-eptarbv,  1)  Tip  \6-yi{i  Suo  icrlv  dx'^P'fT'a  irer^vKbra, 
Kaddnrtp  ev  ttj  Trept^epeii/,  t6  KvpTov  Ka.1  t6  koIXov,  ovdiv  dia<p^pei  Trpbs  rb  vapbv. 

—Nic.  Eih.  I.  xiii.  9. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  63 

in  consciousness,  and  not  with  tbeir  objective  corre- 
lates. His  assertion  that  no  psychological  proposi- 
tion is  expressible  without  a  distinct  and  avowed 
recognition  of  objective  relations  does  not  seem  to 
me  reconcilable  with  fact.  Three  examples  may- 
suffice  : —  1°,  Feelings  experienced  simultaneously 
tend  to  revive  each  other ;  2°,  Perceptions  are  con- 
densed into  conceptions  by  generalising  what  the 
perceptions  have  in  common  ;  3°,  Memories  are  re- 
vivals of  past  experiences.  Now,  although  it  is  true 
that  in  these,  as  indeed  in  all  orders  of  propositions, 
there  is  an  implication  of  external  relations,  can  we 
say  that  it  is  more  distinctly  and  avowedly  recognised 
than  food  is  recognised  in  a  proposition  respecting 
digestion,  or  the  atmosphere  in  a  proposition  respect- 
ing respiration  ? 

47.  Mr.  Spencer  sustains  his  position  partly  by  a 
novel  limitation  of  the  province  of  Psychology,  and 
partly  by  an  insistance  on  the  total  lack  of  com- 
munity between  the  phenomena  of  Consciousness  and 
the  phenomena  treated  of  in  all  other  sciences.  It  is 
true  that,  while  not  adopting  the  broadly  marked 
separation  of  objective  and  subjective  aspect  as  what 
determines  a  corresponding  separation  between  phy- 
siological and  psychological  questions,  he  is  somewhat 
vacillating  in  his  language,  even  to  the  length  of 
defining  the  branch  of  the  science  which  he  calls 
iEstho-Physiology,  and  which  is  said  to  furnish  the 
data  of  Psychology,  as  that  which  treats  "  of  nervous 
phenomena  as  phenomena  of  consciousness"  But 
letting  this  pass,  all  that  he  has  expounded  under  the 
head  of  ^stho-Physiology  may  be  taken  as  the  phy- 
siology of  the  sentient  organism,  which,   under  its 


64  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

subjective  aspect,  is  the  classification  of  the  facts  of 
Sentience ;  and  if  the  facts  of  Consciousness  are  not 
to  be  included  among  the  general  laws  of  Feeling — • 
an  exclusion  and  limitation  which  I  think  render 
Psychology  hopeless  as  a  science — then,  indeed,  the 
physiology  of  the  sentient  organism  will  only  be  a 
preparation  for  Psychology,  and  the  latter  science 
may  claim  its  place  apart  from  Biology,  no  longer 
being  a  science  of  any  functions  of  the  organism. 

48.  Among  the  many  ideas  which  have  occurred 
to  me  in  meditating  on  this  cjuestion  is  the  following : 
A  science  might  be  constituted  out  of  the  facts  of 
Consciousness  alone,  wholly  disregarding  the  objec- 
tive aspect  of  such  facts,  and  consequently  their  con- 
ditions of  existence.  It  would  be  an  abstract  science 
of  Feeling,  to  stand  beside  the  abstract  science  of 
Force — an  jEsthesics  parallel  with  Dynamics.  The 
general  facts  of  Feelinof  formulated  in  abstract  laws 
would  then  be  disena;a2:ed  from  all  concrete  manifesta- 
tions ;  the  organism  and  the  medium  would  be  left 
out  of  account,  as  Matter  and  its  Qualities  are  dis- 
regarded in  Dynamics.  Physicists  having  reduced 
Light,  Heat,  and  Sound  to  vibrations,  setting  aside 
all  the  special  differences  in  the  conditions,  physiolo- 
gists have  imitated  them,  and  reduced  all  sensations 
and  thoughts  to  cerebral  vibrations — settino;  aside  all 
the  specific  differences  in  the  organic  conditions.  A 
psychological  Lngrange  might  arise  who  would  reduce 
all  these  vibrations  to  a  single  equation.'"    Were  such 

*  "  Lagrange  dans  un  ouvrage  immortel  s'est  attache,  en  ranienant  tout 
au  calciil  et  s'^levant  au  dessus  des  details  et  des  faits,  k  remplacer  les 
ph^nom^nes  par  desformules  qui  les  enveloppent  et  les  cachent." — Beutrand. 
(In  the  Appendix  to  vol.  ii.  of  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind  I  have 
treated  of  Lagrange's  work  in  relation  to  Hegel.) 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  65 

a  science  constructed  it  would  assuredly  be  a  power- 
ful instrument ;  but  it  would  not  be  a  Psychology — 
it  would  be  no  theory  of  the  soul — it  would  no  more 
expound  the  facts  of  Human  Nature  than  Dynamics 
expounds  the  facts  of  Nature.  Therefore  I  had  to 
return  from  this  hypothetical  excursion  to  the  posi- 
tion that  a  theory  of  the  soul  was  necessarily  a  part 
of  the-general  theory  of  life  ;  and  Psychology,  in  spite 
of  the  dominantly  subjective  aspect  of  its  phenomena, 
must,  for  all  students  who  reject  the  idea  of  the  soul 
as  something  independent  of  the  organism,  be  a  part 
of  Biology.  That  sentient  phenomena  belong  to  the 
organism  none  dispute ;  the  only  dispute  is  whether 
psychical  phenomena  are  special  forms  of  Sentience. 
Mr.  Spencer  agrees  with  biologists  in  regarding  the 
phenomena  of  Consciousness  as  subjective  aspects  of 
certain  organic  phenomena — "  such  nervous  changes 
as  are  brought  to  the  general  centre  of  nervous  con- 
nections;" and  since  he  would  also  admit  that  to 
withdraw  sensations,  emotions,  and  volitions  from 
the  group  of  animal  functions  would  seriously  trun- 
cate the  science  of  Life,  leaving  it  only  Nutrition, 
Growth,  and  Eeproduction  for  its  province,  there 
must  be  some  very  strong  reasons  which  determine 
his  rejection  of  the  conclusion,  seemingly  irresistible, 
that  Psychology  must  be  a  branch  of  Biology.  What 
are  these  reasons  ? 

49.  One  has  already  been  debated.  He  separates 
^stho-Physiology,  the  science  of  the  sentient  organ- 
ism, on  the  one  hand,  from  the  science  of  the  nervous 
system,  and,  on  the  other,  from  the  science  of  Con- 
sciousness. '' j^Estho-Physiology,"  he  says,  "has  a 
position  that  is  entirely  unique.     It  belongs  neither 

VOL.  III.  E 


66  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE    AND   MIND. 

to  tlie  objective  world  nor  to  the  subjective  world; 
but,  taking  a  term  from  each,  occupies  itself  with  the 
correlation  of  the  two."  In  the  course  of  his  ex|)osi- 
tion  he  presents  Psychology  "  as  a  specialised  j)ai't  of 
Biology,"  but  separated  from  it  as  Geology  from 
Astronomy,  or  Biology  from  Geology,  by  the  conspi- 
cuous presence  of  additional  factors,  which,  however, 
also  make  their  appearance  occasionally  in  Biology. 
Now,  since  I  too  admit  additional  factors,  and  one — 
the  social — which  he  does  not  here  enumerate,  our 
difference  so  far  is  not  conspicuous^  nor  is  Mr.  Spencer's 
ground  for  his  isolation  of  Psychology  very  clearly 
marked.  But  it  becomes  evident  in  the  following 
passage  : — "  A  far  more  radical  distinction  remains 
to  be  drawn.  While,  under  its  objective  aspect,  Psy- 
chology is  to  be  classed  as  one  of  the  concrete  sciences 
which  successively  decrease  in  scope  as  they  increase 
in  speciality,  under  its  subjective  aspect  Psychology 
is  a  totally  unique  science,  independent  of  and  anti- 
thetically opposed  to  all  other  sciences  whatever. 
The  thouQ-hts  and  feeling's  which  constitute  a  con- 
sciousness  are  absolutely  inaccessible  to  any  but  the 
possessor  of  that  consciousness,  form  an  existence 
that  has  no  place  among  the  existences  with  which 
the  rest  of  the  sciences  deal"  (p.  140). 

50.  The  antithesis  between  objective  and  subjective 
may  serve  to  distinguish  Physiology  from  Psychology, 
but  it  does  not  mark  out  Psychology  as  totally  opposed 
to  all  other  sciences,  for  the  simple  reason  that  tliey 
likewise  deal  with  phenomena  having  the  twofold 
aspect.  The  motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  the 
motions  of  minerals  and  gases,  and  the  motions  of 
organic  bodies,  are  objective  aspects  of  our  sensible 


THE   STODY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  C7 

affections ;  what  we  know  of  colours,  forms,  heat, 
weight,  motion,  &c.,  is  due  to  the  action  of  the 
Cosmos  and  reaction  of  our  organism  :  we  believe  that 
there  is  a  Notself  acting  on  the  Self;  but  all  we  know 
of  this  is  what  we  feel.  The  feelings  are  distinguished 
and  classified ;  some  are  referred  to  causes  outside 
the  organism,  others  to  causes  inside  the  organism. 
Tlius_  each  fact  and  each  feeling  has  necessarily  two 
aj£ects,  one  turned  towards  the  Notself,  the  other 
towards  the  Self.  The  fact  is  not  a  fact  except  in  so 
far  as  it  is  felt ;  the  feeling  has  always  a  reference  to 
its  cause,  external  or  internal.  When,  therefore,  the 
question  is  asked.  Why  must  a  phenomenon  have  two 
aspects  ?  the  answer  is,  Because  it  is  the  product  of 
two  factors,  an  organism  that  feels,  and  an  external 
that  is  felt. 

The  psychologist,  indeed,  has  to  explain  how  it  is 
that  one  set  of  feelings  rapidly  assume  the  position  of 
objective  signs,  becoming  less  and  less  referred  to  the 
feeler,  more  and  more  to  the  felt,  as  when  the  Jiame 
is  referred  to  the  objective  fire,  itself  a  synthesis  of 
feelings,  but  the  pain  of  a  burn  is  referred  to  the 
organism,  and  not  to  the  fire.  The  psychologist  has 
to  expound  this  by  his  theory  of  knowledge.  In  this 
respect  his  science  is  unique  ;  for  whereas  the  other 
sciences  are  concerned  with  the  classification  of  know- 
ledge, his  science  treats  of  how  we  come  by  know- 
ledge ;  but  since  that  also  is  a  department  of  know- 
ledge, it  comes  under  the  same  canons  of  research  as 
all  the  others.  Moreover,  Psychology  is  not  limited 
to  the  theory  of  knowledge ;  it  is  the  ascertainment 
and  classification  of  the  facts  of  Feeling,  both  in  their 
subjective  and  objective  relations,  and  in  this  way 


68  PROBLEMS   OF  LIFE   AND   MIXD. 

also  comes  under  the  general  conditions  of  science. 
Hence  we  cannot  separate  Psychology  from  the  other 
sciences  on  the  ground  of  its  phenomena  being  feel- 
ings, nor  on  the  ground  of  the  feelings  being  limited 
to  individual  experience.  All  sciences  deal  with  feel- 
ings. Psychology  alone  deals  Avith  them  in  their  sub- 
jective aspect.  It  is  not  the  presence  of  Conscious- 
ness that  marks  off  the  phenomena  as  those  of  an 
unique  science,  but  the  presence  of  a  particular  point 
of  view,  a  theoretic  attention  to  the  feelings  as  feel- 
ings. The  ordinary  man  feels  as  the  psychologist 
feels ;  but  he  does  not  reflect  on  the  peculiar  nature 
of  these  feelings  as  changes  in  his  organism,  does  not 
attempt  to  account  for  their  production  and  succes- 
sions. His  consciousness  no  more  suffices  for  a  theory 
of  Consciousness  than  the  perception  of  geometric 
forms  suffices  for  the  construction  of  a  science  of 
Geometry.  Science  begins  when  the  facts  are  classi- 
fied and  systematised.  And  the  psychologist  classifies 
and  systematises  the  subjective  aspects  of  Feeling, 
irrespective  of  their  objective  aspects,  as  the  geometer 
isolates  the  relations  of  masfnitude  from  all  other  sen- 
sible  relations. 

51.  With  regard  to  the  second  point,  while  it  is 
true,  in  one  sense,  that  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of 
others  are  inaccessible  to  us,  in  another  sense  it  is  in- 
admissible. Psychology  is  in  a  bad  way,  if  the  philo- 
sophers are  to  be  trusted ;  one  school  declaring  that 
each  man  can  only  Tcnow  his  own  thoughts,  and  infer 
the  existence  of  other  men's  from  certain  appearances ; 
while  another  school  declares  that  he  cannot  really 
know  his  own  thoughts  as  they  are,  only  as  they 
appear  [Kant,  Anthropologie,  §  7).      Now,  granting 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  69 

all  that  is  claimed  when  it  is  said  that  the  feelings  of 
others  are  inaccessible  to  us,  this  does  not  give  Psy- 
chology an  unique  position,  for  it  is  equally  true  of 
the  vital  functions  of  others,  and  indeed  of  all  that 
belongs  to  the  not-ourselves  ;  yet  we  know  something 
of  them,  and  Biology  and  Cosmology  are  sciences. 
And  in  another  sense  the  feelings  and  thoughts  of 
others  must  be  accessible  to  us,  otherwise  there  could 
be  no  science  of  Feeling,  nor  any  communication  from 
others  to  ourselves  of  what  they  feel  and  think.  It 
is  true  that  your  subjective  state  can  only  be  an  ob- 
jective fact  to  me,  except  in  so  far  as  I  am  able  to 
interpret  the  objective  fact  in  its  subjective  aspect. 
But  this  is  true  of  all  facts.  I  express  my  feelings 
and  thoughts  in  actions,  gestures,  and  words.  I  ob- 
serve other  beings  closely  resembling  me  in  all  objec- 
tive relations ;  and  observing  these  beings  act,  gesti- 
culate, speak  as  I  do,  I  conclude  that  they  are  moved 
by  similar  feelings.  It  is  of  such  conclusions  that 
knowledge  is  made.  The  distinction  between  Know- 
ledge and  Opinion  is  that,  in  the  first  case,  the  pre- 
vision is  founded  on  inferences  that  have  been  veri- 
fied. We  know  something  of  an  object  when  we 
can,  from  past  experience,  foresee  what  its  effects 
will  be,  and  not  simply  what  they  7nay  he  under 
changed  circumstances.  The  psychologist  interprets 
certain  visible  facts  as  the  signs  of  invisible  feelings, 
just  as  he  knows  that  sugar  is  sweet  and  that  dogs 
bite.  When  a  man  is  motionless  and  silent,  we  can- 
not certainly  know  what  is  passing  within  him — there 
are  no  visible  signs  to  guide  us.  When  an  acid  is 
quietly  lying  beside  an  alkali  we  cannot  know  what 
will  be  the  effect  of  their  combination  unless  past  ex- 


70  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE  AND   MIND. 

perience  enables  us  to  foresee  it.  The  statement  that 
"each  individual  is  absolutely  incapable  of  knowing 
any  feelings  but  his  own"  is  acceptable  only  on  a  very 
restricted  definition  of  knowledge ;  and  on  this  defi- 
nition we  must  declare  that  man  is  incapable  of  know- 
ing anything  except  his  present  feelings.  Exclude 
Inference,  and  we  do  not  know  that  sugar  is  sweet  or 
that  doirs  bite  ;  admit  Inference,  and  we  know  that 
other  men  beside  ourselves  have  feelings  of  the  same 
nature  as  our  own. 

50.  My  object  in  this  discussion  has  been  to  rein- 
force the  position  that  Psychology  is  a  branch  of  Bio- 
logy, having  for  its  special  province  the  analysis  and 
classification  of  the  facts  and  laws  of  Sensibility  viewed 
in  their  subjective  aspect.  It  embraces  Animal  and 
Human  Sensibility  ;  but  partly  because  of  the  supreme 
interest  of  the  human  .phenomena,  and  partly  because 
we  can  less  easily  understand  the  mental  phenomena 
of  animals,  Psychology  must — for  the  present  at  least 
— be  restricted  to  those  of  human  beings. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


THE    SOCIAL     FACTOR. 


51.  The  first  step  towards  the  constitution  of  our 
science  has  been  the  specification  of  its  object  and 
scope,  and  the  rehxtion  it  bears  to  all  other  sciences. 
The  next  step  must  be  to  specify  the  Method  and 
register  the  fundamental  inductions. 

Biology  furnishes  both  method  and  data  in  the 
elucidation  of  the  relations  of  the  organism  and  the 
external  medium  ;  and  so  far  as  Animal  Psychology 
is  concerned  this  is  enough.  But  Human  Psychology 
has  a  wider  reach,  includes  another  important  factor, 
the  influence  of  tjie  social  medium.  This  is  not 
simpl}^  an  addition,  like  that  of  a  new  sense  which  is 
the  source  of  new  modes  of  Feeling ;  it  is  a  factor 
which  permeates  the  whole  composition  of  the  mind. 
All  the  problems  become  complicated  by  it.  In  rela- 
tion to  Nature,  man  is  animal ;  in  relation  to  Culture, 
he  is  social.  As  the  ideal  world  rises  above  and  trans- 
forms the  sensible  world,  so  Culture  transforms 
Nature  physically  and  morally,  fashioning  the  forest 
and  the  swamp  into  garden  and  meadow-lands,  the 
selfish  savage  into  the  sympathetic  citizen.  The 
organism  adjusts  itself  to  the  external  medium  ;  it 
creates,  and  is  in  turn  modified  by,  the  social  medium 
for  Society  is  the  product  of  human  feelings,  and  its 


^"2  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

existence  is  paiH  passu  developed  with  the  feelings 
which  in  turn  it  modifies  and  enlarges  at  each  stage. 
Obviously,  then,  our  science  must  seek  its  data  not 
only  in  Biology  but  in  Sociology;  not  only  in  the 
animal  functions  of  the  organism,  but  in  the  faculties 
developed  under  social  develojDments. 

52.  This  conception  is  novel.  Formerly  there  was 
but  a  vague  appreciation  of  the  relation  between 
Psychology  and  Physiology ;  and  even  when  the 
advance  of  knowledge  forced  the  admission  of  some 
constant  dependence  of  mental  functions  on  bodily 
functions,  there  was  for  the  most  part  little  precision 
in  the  conception.  Men  knew  that  the  mental  func- 
tions were  conjoined  with  the  organic  activities,  and 
were  in  some  way  dependent  on  the  external  medium. 
They  knew  also  that  the  social  conditions  had  some 
influence ;  but  this  knowledge  found  only  fitful 
application.  Psychologists  for  the  most  part  pursued 
speculative  inquiries ;  they  proceeded  deductively 
from  certain  imaginary  principles,  and  troubled  them- 
selves little  with  induction  and  verification.  The 
abstract  theory  of  Mind  preceded  all  examination 
of  mental  phenomena.  Doctrine  took  the  place  of 
Search.  A  similar  procedure  had  been  followed  in 
the  study  of  Life,  and  still  earlier  in  the  study  of  the 
Cosmos  :  unabashed  by  ignorance  of  Anatomy  and 
Physiology,  undeterred  by  the  absence  of  any  in- 
sight into  physical  laws,  philosopliers  constructed 
theories  of  Life  and  the  Cosmos,  and  soon  presented 
these  theories  as  dogmas.  Slowly  the  change  came. 
The  futility  of  this  philosophising  is  now  a  common- 
place ;  and  all  thinkers  call  upon  inductive  research 
for  the  data  which  may  be  co-ordinated  into  doctrine. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  73 

The  manifest  superiority  of  the  new  procedure  is  its 
constant  control  of  speculation  by  verification;  hence  its 
step-by-step  progression,  slower  but  more  assured  than 
that  of  the  large  and  incoherent  leaps  of  Metaphysic. 

Psychology,  if  it  is  to  take  rank  with  the  sciences, 
must  pursue  their  course.  It  cannot  be  too  alert 
against  the  tendency  of  accepting  unverified  infer- 
ences, whether  introspective  or  physiological.  But 
when  thus  alert,  it  may  give  free  play  to  speculation. 
The  idea  of  submitting  speculative  inferences  to  objec- 
tive verification  slowly  gained  ground,  as  the  convic- 
tion grew  that  mental  phenomena  had  a  physiological 
basis.  This  conviction  had  a  severe  struggle  to  go 
through.  The  most  accredited  thinkers  not  only 
detached  Man  from  Nature,  but  the  Mind  from  the 
Organism ;  they  invented  a  Psyche  as  the  source 
of  all  mental  phenomena,  and  endowed  it  with  attri- 
butes which  were  in  all  respects  the  opposite  of 
organic  attributes.  The  metaphysical  notions  of  im- 
materiality, simplicity,  spontaneity,  &c.,had  a  certain 
significance  as  abstract  expressions  of  observed  phe- 
nomena ;  unhappily  they  -were  accepted  as  realities, 
and  were  made  the  grounds  of  deduction,  so  that  any 
observations  which  seemed  irreconcilable  with  one  of 
these  abstractions  were  rejected  or  explained  away. 

53.  Impatience  at  the  futility  of  the  speculative 
method  led  to  the  first  attempts  of  inductive  analysis. 
The  facts  revealed  to  Introspection  were  classified, 
and  some  approximative  interpretations  were  reached. 
But  still  the  fatal  restriction  of  the  science  to  the  facts 
of  Introspection  kept  men  from  the  study  of  the  or- 
ganism. The  organs  of  Sense  were  too  conspicuously 
concerned  in  Sensation  to  be  wholly  ignored  ;  but 


74  PROBLEMS    OF    LIFE   AND    MIND. 

while,  on  the  one  hand,  the  Physiology  of  the  Senses 
was  very  little  understood,  on  the  other  hand  men 
were  deterred  from  the  search  by  alarm  at  Matei:ial- 
ism.  Nor  was  this  alarm  without  its  justification  at 
that  time.  The  spontaneity  and  subjectivity  of  moral 
and  intellectual  processes  stood  in  marked  contrast 
with  the  mechanical  and  physical  terms  in  which  the 
materialists  expressed  them.  The  revolt  against 
Materialism  was  not  entirely  the  revolt  of  Sentiment, 
though  no  doubt  Sentiment  has  powerfully  aided  and 
sustained  it,  giving  momentum  to  the  iutellectual 
discernment  of  a  contradiction,  so  that  what  reason 
regarded  as  a  defective  conception,  sentiment  dreaded 
as  a  moral  degradation.  Who  that  had  ever  looked 
upon  the  pulpy  mass  of  brain  substance,  and  the 
nervous  cords  connecting  it  with  the  orgaus,  could 
resist  the  shock  of  incredulity  on  heariug  that  all  he 
knew  of  passion,  intellect,  and  will  was  nothing  more 
than  molecular  change  in  this  pulpy  mass  ?  Who 
that  had  ever  seen  a  nerve-cell  could  be  patient  on 
being  told  that  Thought  was  a  property  of  such  cells, 
as  G-ravitation  was  a  property  of  Matter  1 

54.  Although  it  is  tolerably  certain  that  the 
materialists  did  not  mean  all  that  they  were  said  to 
mean,  and  quite  certain  that  they  repudiated  the 
consequences  forced  upon  their  premisses  by  adver- 
saries, they  did  fall  into  the  error  which  besets  ana- 
lysis— that  of  substituting  a  part  for  the  whole — and 
did  not  discriminate  the  objective  from  the  subjective 
aspects  of  the  phenomena.  But  they,  and  we  with 
them,  rightfully  insist  on  the  fact  that  mental  phe- 
nomena are  functions  of  the  oro^anism ;  and  we  are 
no  more  called  upon  to  explain  ivhy  this  is  so  than 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  75 

why  masses  gravitate  and  plants  germinate :  our 
object  is  to  discover  the  how  and  not  the  why.  A 
vast  mass  of  inductions  led  to  the  conclusion  that 
psychical  functions  are  not  only  functions  of  the  living 
oriranism,  but  that  in  the  mechanism  of  these  func- 
tions  the  chief  part  is  assigned  to  the  neuro-muscular 
system.  If  this  be  granted,  there  is  no  more  difficulty 
in  understanding  how  the  vital  property  of  Sensibility 
should  be  chiefly  manifested  by  the  nervous  tissue  than 
in  understanding  how  the  vital  property  of  Contractility 
should  be  chiefly  manifested  by  the  muscular  tissue. 

But  this  is  only  a  step.  Looking  at  the  brain,  and 
asking,  How  can  this  pulpy  mass  be  credited  with 
Thought  ?  is  looking  at  one  part  of  a  complex  me- 
chanism and  wondering  how  it  can  be  credited  with 
mechanical  products.  You  must  know  the  whole 
mechanism  before  you  can  rightly  interpret  the  action 
of  a  part.  You  must  understand  the  living  organism 
before  you  can  interpret  the  function  of  the  brain. 
And  more  :  in  looking  at  the  brain  you  contemplate 
the  mechanism  on  its  objective  side  :  it  is  a  material 
mass,  and  its  actions  are  molecular  changes.  If  you 
ask.  How  can  these  material  changes  be  feelings  and 
thoughts  ?  you  are  suddenly  shifting  from  the  objec- 
tive to  the  subjective  point  of  view.  Dissect  an  eye 
with  the  utmost  accuracy,  and  you  will  never  divine 
in  such  dissection  that  it  is  capable  of  responding  to 
the  stimulus  of  light.  Contemplate  an  ovum,  and  you 
will  never  divine  that  this  microscopic  cell  is  capable 
of  developing  into  a  complex  and  gigantic  animal. 
Induction  proves  the  eye  to  be  the  organ  of  sight 
and  the  ovum  to  be  the  starting-point  of  an  organism. 
But  we  must  know  these  facts  before  we  can  read 


76  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

them  in  our  observations  of  eye  and  ovum.  What 
does  this  mean  ?  It  means  that  the  data  which  have 
been  studied  apart  must  be  reconstructed  by  a  syn- 
thesis before  we  reach  an  explanation.  Our  know- 
ledge respecting  the  sentient  mechanism  is  still 
wretchedly  imjDerfect,  but,  were  it  a  hundredfold  en- 
larged, it  would  still  be  objectively  nothing  more 
than  watching  a  printing  machine  in  operation,  which 
would  disclose  how  the  sheets  of  paper  were  laid  on 
the  types  and  removed  after  the  roller  had  passed 
over  them,  but  would  tell  us  nothing  of  how  the 
types  were  set  up,  nor  what  was  the  significance  of 
the  printed  words. 

55.  From  these  considerations  it  appears  that  while 
the  subjective  analysis  of  Introspection  needs  the 
control  of  objective  analysis,  and  Feeling  must  always 
be  regarded  as  a  function  of  the  Organism,  there  is 
also  the  necessity  of  completing  objective  observa- 
tion by  subjective  introspection,  interpreting  the  facts 
of  the  Orf>:anism  in  terms  of  Feelinoj.  So  lono^  as 
mental  processes  were  regarded  as  wholly  distinct 
from  organic  processes,  the  application  of  Physiology 
to  Psychology,  or  of  psychological  experiences  to  phy- 
siological problems,  could  only  be  illusory.  Modern 
thought  has  revolutionised  the  question  by  its  grasp 
of  the  principle  that  mental  state  and  organic  state 
are  only  two  different  aspects  of  one  and  the  same 
thing — distinct  from  each  other  in  so  far  as  they 
are  apprehended  in  different  ways  and  expressed  in 
different  terms.  Thus  illuminated,  the  two  sciences 
have  a  mutual  instrumentality,  and  their  respective 
series  of  phenomena  serve,  like  two  versions  of  the 
same  original,  to  elucidate  and  amplify  each  other. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  H 

56.  A  twofold  advance  has  been  made.  Biologists 
have  ceased  to  isolate  man  from  Nature,  and  they 
have  been  followed  by  psychologists  who  have  ceased 
to  isolate  man  from  the  animals.  Observation  has 
revealed  more  and  more  of  the  fundamental  similarity 
in  the  structure  and  functions  of  man  and  animals. 
Introspection  could  never  have  revealed  this.  And 
now-a-days,  instead  of  having  to  warn  psychologists 
against  neglecting  the  data  which  are  furnished  by 
observation  of  animals,  there  is  need  rather  of  a  warn- 
ing ngainst  exaggerating  their  value. 

57.  The  first  great  step  in  the  right  direction  was 
made  by  Cabanis  when  he  endeavoured  to  point  out 
the  invariable  connection  of  moral  phenomena  with 

.organic  conditions.  Imperfect  as  the  attempt  was,  it 
was  a  preparation  for  a  more  precise  and  comprehen- 
sive view  of  the  relation  between  functions  and  organs 
— the  basis  of  our  science.  Another  great  step  was 
taken  by  Gall  in  his  search  for  the  particular  organs  by 
which  particular  functions  were  effected.  His  localisa- 
tion of  these  organs  in  the  cerebral  convolutions  was 
indeed  defective  in  principle,  since  it  ignored  the  organ- 
ism as  a  whole,  and  assigned  to  one  part  of  a  complex 
arrangement  the  results  due  to  many  parts  ;  more- 
over, his  anatomical  and  physiological  data  were  inac- 
curate. Nevertheless  his  hypothesis  was  truly  scien- 
tific in  character,  and  it  gave  an  immense  impulse  to 
research.  He  taught  men  to  keep  steadily  in  view 
the  constant  relation  between  structure  and  function  ; 
he  taught  them  the  necessity  of  objective  analysis ; 
he  taught  them  the  futility  of  looking  inwards,  and 
neglecting  the  vast  mass  of  external  observation 
which  animals  and  societies  afi'orded  ;  he  taught  them 


78  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE    AND    MIND. 

where  to  seek  the  primary  organic  conditions — in 
inherited  structures  and  inherited  aptitudes. 

The  effect  of  this  teaching  is  conspicuous  in  modern 
works,  however  little  of  his  special  system  they  may 
rej^roduce.  Indeed,  we  may  now  say  that  the  biolo- 
gical attitude  has  displaced  the  metaphysical:  mental 
phenomena  are  everywhere  regarded  as  vital,  and  not 
as  having  a  source  which  is  independent  of  the  living 
organism. 

58.  But  there  is  a  final  step  to  be  taken  for  the 
constitution  of  the  science.  The  biological  concep- 
tion is  defective  in  so  far  as  it  treats  only  of  the 
individual  organism,  and  only  of  the  organism  in  its 
relation  to  the  external  medium.  For  Animal  Psy- 
chology this  would  suffice  ;  for  Human  Psychology  it 
is  manifestly  insufficient.  Man  is  a  social  animal 
— the  unit  of  a  collective  life — and  to  isolate  him 
from  Society  is  almost  as  great  a  limitation  of  the 
scope  of  Psychology,  as  to  isolate  him  from  Nature. 
To  seek  the  whole  data  of  our  science  in  neural  pro- 
cesses on  the  one  hand,  and  revelations  of  Introspec- 
tion on  the  other,  is  to  leave  inexplicable  the  many 
and  profound  differences  which  distinguish  man  from 
the  animals  ;  and  these  differences  can  be  shown  to 
depend  on  the  operation  of  the  Social  Factor,  which 
transforms  perceptions  into  conceptions,  and  sensa- 
tions into  sentiments. 

It  is  this  final  conception  of  the  science  which  it 
will  be  my  aim  hereafter  to  expound.  I  have  ah-eady 
intimated  that  others  *  before  me  had  been  impressed 
with  the  fact  that  social  influences  modified  mental 

*  Notably  Mr.  Spencer.  See  the  luminous  exposition  :  Psychology ^ 
ii.  521  et  seq. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  79 

phenomena ;  indeed,  the  fact  was  too  conspicuous  to 
be  overlooked ;  but  I  am  not  aware  that  any  writer, 
not  even  Comte,  who  expressly  recognises  it  as  a 
psychological  factor,  had  seen  its  vast  reach  or  traced 
its  mode  of  operation.  The  influence  of  the  external 
medium  was  likewise  too  conspicuous  in  Physiology 
to  have  been  at  any  time  entirely  overlooked ;  never- 
theless a  clear  recognition  of  its  mode  of  operation  is 
quite  modern.  The  patent  fact  that  Psychology  was 
by  one  school  based  on  Introspection,  by  another  on 
Cerebral  Physiology,  and  by  the  others  on  a  com- 
bination of  these  lines,  proves  how  imperfectly  the 
Sociological  basis  was  appreciated. 

59.  Let  us  suppose  our  knowledge  of  the  organism 
to  be  enormously  extended,  it  would  still  be  incom- 
petent to  furnish  an  explanation  of  moral  sentiments 
and  intellectual  conceptions,  simply  because  these  are 
impersonal  and  social,  arising  out  of  social  needs  and 
social  conditions,  involving,  indeed,  the  organism  and 
its  functions,  but  involving  these  in  relation  to  ex- 
periences only  possible  to  the  collective  life.  The 
higher  animals  have  structures  closely  resembling  our 
own ;  they  have  sensations,  emotions,  perceptions, 
judgments,  volitions,  generically  like,  though  specifi- 
cally different  from,  our  own;  but  their  experiences 
are  restricted  to  their  personal  needs,  their  emotions 
are  never  developed  into  impersonal  sentiments,  their 
loo^ic  knows  nothing  of  abstractions  and  the  construe- 
tion  of  abstractions  in  Science.  Sentiment  and 
Science  are  beyond  the  range  of  Physiology,  for  they 
are  not  interpretable  by  the  Mechanism  ;  they  are  the 
evolutions  of  Experience,  and  are  acquired  slowly 
through  the  long  periods  of  social  evolution.     Nay, 


80  PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

many  sentiments  and  conceptions  are  not  possible 
even  to  human  beings  until  the  social  evolution  has 
brought  them  in  its  train.  So  far  from  their  being 
innate,  they  are  utterly  unknown  to  the  vast  majority 
of  mankind. 

60.  Driven  thus  to  seek  beyond  the  organism  and 
its  inherited  aptitudes  for  the  origin  of  a  large  portion 
of  our  mental  life,  we  can  find  it  only  in  the  consti- 
tution of  the  Social  Organism  of  which  we  are  the 
units.  We  there  find  the  impersonal  experiences  of 
Tradition  accumulating  for  each  individual  a  fund  of 
Knowledge,  an  instrument  of  Power  which  magnifies 
his  existence.  The  experiences  of  many  become  the 
guide  of  each ;  they  do  not  all  perish  with  the  indi- 
vidual; much  survives,  takes  form  in  opinion,  precept, 
and  law,  in  prejudice  and  superstition.  The  feelings 
of  each  are  blended  into  a  general  consciousness, 
which  in  turn  reacts  upon  the  individual  conscious- 
ness. And  this  mighty  impersonality  is  at  once  the 
product  and  the  factor  of  social  evolution.  It  rests 
on  the  evolution  of  Language,  as  a  means  of  symboli- 
cal expression  rising  out  of  the  animal  function  of 
individual  expression  by  the  stimulus  of  collective 
needs.  Without  Language,  no  Society  having  intel- 
lectual and  moral  life ;  without  Society,  no  need  of 
Language.  Without  Language^^no  Tradition  ;  with- 
out Tradition  no  elaboration  of  the  common  arts  and 
skill  which  cherish  and  extend  the  simplest  products 
of  the  community ;  and  without  Tradition,  no  Reli- 
gion, no  Science,  no  Art. 

61.  It  is  therefore  to  History  and  the  observation 
of  man  in  social  relations  that  we  must  look  for  data 
which  may  supplement  those   of  Introspection  and 


THE    STUDY    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.  81 

Physiology.  The  conditions  of  existence  of  mental 
phenomena  are  not  only  biological  but  also  sociolo- 
gical studies.  A  serious  investigation  of  these  will 
serve  to  remove  most  if  not  all  of  the  difficulties 
which  make  men  cling  to  the  spiritualist  hypothesis, 
because  they  are  profoundly  impressed  with  the  in- 
adequacy of  the  materialist  hypothesis.  There  will, 
of  course,  always  remain  mysteries  enough,  on  any 
explanation  of  the  phenomena,  but  these  will  not 
interfere  with  the  scientific  orderliness  of  verifiable 
conceptions,  and  Psychology  will  take  its  rank  among 
the  positive  sciences,  pursued  on  the  same  Method  as 
all  the  rest. 


CHAPTER  V. 

SUBJECTIVE   ANALYSIS    AND    THE   INTEOSPECTIVE 
METHOD. 

62.  Having  stated  the  problem,  we  have  now  to  in- 
quire how  its  solution  is  to  be  pursued.  The  reader 
will  already  have  gathered  that  I  range  myself  neither 
on  the  side  of  those  who  proclaim  Introspection  the 
only  valid  source  of  psychological  knowledge,  nor  of 
those  who  contemptuously  dismiss  it,  and  rely  solely 
on  Observation  of  external  appearances.  The  "de- 
liverances of  Consciousness"  cannot  furnish  the  solu- 
tion of  a  problem  which  we  have  seen  to  be  highly 
complex,  involving  both  biological  and  sociological 
data.  But  while  limiting  the  claims  of  Introspection, 
we  need  not  deny  their  validity. 

Introspection  is  Observation,  differing  only  in  that 
the  phenomena  observed  are  subjective  states  or 
feelings,  and  not  objective  states  or  changes  in  the 
Felt.  We  observe  changes  of  Feeling,  no  less  than 
changes  in  the  External ;  and  whatever  place  is 
assigned  to  Observation  in  scientific  method  must, 
on  this  ground,  be  assigned  to  Introspection. 

63.  A  preliminary  difficulty  lies  in  the  metaphor 
of  an  ''  internal  eye,"  or  "  internal  sense,"  co-ordinate 
with  the  external  senses.*    The  physiologist  knows 

*  Kant  divides  the  senses  into  external  and  internal,  "  The  first  is 
tliat  in  which  the  body  is  affected  by  corporeal  objects  ;  the  second  that 


THE  STUDY   OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  83 

of  no  such  organ.  Nay,  more,  were  sucli  an  organ 
anatomically  demonstrable,  it  would  not  suffice  for 
the  observation  of  what  passes  in  Consciousness  ;  the 
simple  reason  being  that  no  organ  observes ;  and  Con- 
sciousness is  the  state  of  the  Sensorium,  the  attitude 
of  the  sentient  being  alternately  directed  to  each  of 

in  -which  it  is  ajfected  throngh  the  mind."  Here  we  have  a  complete 
departure  from  every  phy.-^iological  conception  of  a  sense  :  the  mind 
acting  on  the  body  to  produce  feeling — not  in  the  mind,  but  in  the 
body  !  "  It  is  not,"  he  adds,  "  the  pure  apperception,  a  consciousness  of 
what  the  man  does,  for  this  belongs  to  the  faculty  of  Thought,  but  what 
the  man  sjiffeis,  in  as  far  as  he  is  affected  by  the  play  of  his  own  thought." 
— Anthropologie,  §  13  and  §  22.  Corap.  Kritik  :  Trans,  ^sthetik,  §  2, 
where  tlie  inner  sense  is  said  to  be  the  "special  form  under  which  the 
intuition  of  inward  changes  is  possible."  A  glance  at  the  various 
treatises  shows  how  various  and  vague  are  the  interpretations  of  this 
inner  sense.  Snell  {Empirische  I'sycJiologie,  1802)  defines  the  outer 
senses  as  those  which  perceive  objects  in  space  ;  the  inner  sense  is  that 
which  perceives  what  passes  within  us.  The  former  have  their  definite 
organs  ;  so  must  the  latter  have  its  organ,  though  we  cannot  define  it, 
p.  68.  Daub  {Anthropologie,  p.  112)  makes  the  inner  sen?e  the  three- 
fold sense  of  Time — past,  present,  and  future  ;  and  places  it  on  a  level 
with  the  outer  senses.  Fries  {Psychische  Antliropologie,  1820)  says 
the  inner  sense  is  our  susceptibility  of  being  stimulated  by  mental 
activity  ;  to  it  belongs  the  excitation  of  self-knowledge,  consciousness, 
and  the  emotions  of  grief  and  joy,  p.  45.  He  expressly  declares  that  by 
outer  and  inner  senses  he  does  not  signify  bodily  but  spiritual  organs, 
BO  that  all  the  fundamental  dispositions  of  the  soul  are  called  into 
activity  in  the  same  way  from  the  outer  and  inner  senses,  j).  46. 
Beneke  (Lehrhuch  der  Fsychologie,  §  128)  rejects  the  distinction  alto- 
gether. Fleming  (Beitriige  zur  Phdosophie  der  Seele.  1830)  identifies  it 
with  the  faculty  of  perception,  and  says  it  is  sometimes  synonymous 
with  intLdiigence,  inner  vision,  and  mind,  i.  53.  Vorlander  (6V(tncZ- 
linien  einer  organischen  Wissenscliaft  der  Seele,  1841)  holds  that  the  inner 
activities  are  perceived  in  the  same  way  as  tire  outer,  and  therefore 
require  no  special  sense,  which,  rightly  understood,  is  always  a  mediate 
organ  for  the  perception  of  what  is  not  immediately  given.  I  need  not 
multiply  examples.  The  French  and  English  psychologists  usually 
designate  the  inner  sense  by  Consciousness.  Cardaillac  {tltudes 
Elemeiitaires  de  Pliilosophie,  1830)  limits  it  to  the  "sentiment  de  iios 
facultes,"  i.  116.  "Comment  pourrions  nous  savoir  que  nous  sentons 
de  mille  manieres  differentes  si  chaque  sentiment,  chaque  idee,  chaque 
acte  de  la  volonte  ne  luisait  conscience  de  lui-meme  ?  "  p.  118. 


84  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE   AND   MINT). 

the  various  sentient  affections.  An  animal  moves 
before  us,  and  we  observe  either  its  motions,  its  shape 
and  colour,  or  the  effect  (curiosity  or  fear)  produced 
in  us.  A  distention  of  our  intestines  directs  con- 
sciousness either  to  the  unpleasant  sensation  or  to  its 
imaojined  cause. 

The  psychologist  may  perhaps  object  that,  by  the 
"  internal  eye,"  he  means  neither  an  organ  nor  a 
mode  of  observation  limited  to  the  s^^here  of  Sense ; 
but  a  mental  function,  which  is  that  of  observingf  all 
the  changes  and  operations  of  Consciousness  :  "  It  is 
tlie  Mind  itself  reflecting  on  itself."  Now,  since  we 
are  undeniably  conscious  of  our  mental  states  and 
operations,  and  thus  the  ]\Iind  does  reflect  on  them, 
the  metaphor  of  an  internal  eye  may  be  accepted  ;  all 
that  remains  for  us,  then,  is  to  recognise  it  for  a 
metaphor,  and  to  explain,  if  we  can,  what  are  the 
conditions  it  expresses. 

It  is  an  idle  objection  that  because  the  eye  cannot 
see  itself  seeing,  therefore  the  Mind  cannot  see  itself 
thinking.  The  eye  does  not  see  at  all,  except  through 
its  co-operation  with  the  Sensorium  which  greets  the 
prese^ited  object. 

"  Nor  doth  fhe  eye  itself 
(That  most  pure  spirit  of  sense)  behold  itself, 
Not  going  from  itself  ;  but  eye  to  eye  opposed 
Salutes  each  other  with  each  other's  form."  * 

64.  Kant,  Broussais,  Comte,  and  others  have  re- 
jected the  claims  of  Introspection  ;  but  on  grounds 
that  are  not  tenable.  Kant  declared  that  Psychology 
could  not  become  a  science  of  observation  and  experi- 
ment.    Had  he  lived  to  our  day  he  would  have  seen 

*  Troilus  and  Crcssida,  Act  iii.  sc.  3. 


THE    STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  85 

it  not  only  become  experimental,  but  some  of  its 
phenomena  quantitatively  determined,  with  as  much 
precision  as  vital  phenomena  admit.  He  said,  and 
truly,  that  the  elements  of  inner  observation  cannot 
really  be  isolated  and  recombined  at  will,  after  the 
manner  of  physical  or  cliemical  observation.  All  sub- 
jective analysis  is  ideal  only,  and  so  far  is  greatly 
inferior  to  objective  analysis.  We  have  no  micro- 
scope, balance,  and  reagent,  to  see  what  is  too  minute 
for  the  unassisted  eye,  to  measure  what  is  quantita- 
tive, to  test  what  is  compound  in  mental  processes  : 
our  closest  observation  is  iiiteyyretation.  This  granted, 
we  reverse  the  medal,  and  see  that  in  the  certainty 
of  Feeling  there  is  more  than  a  compensation  for 
the  exactness  of  objective  analysis.  Nay,  even  the 
observations  of  external  data  have  all  to  be  inter- 
preted, and  their  value  wholly  lies  in  the  interpre- 
tation. Kant's  objection  therefore  only  states  a  defect; 
and  his  final  objection,  namely,  that  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  of  others  are  inaccessible  to  us  [Metapli.  An- 
faiigsgrilncle,  preface),  we  have  already  argued  to  be 
an  error  (§  51). 

65.  Comte  is  equally  absolute,  and,  like  Kant,  de- 
clares internal  observation  to  l)e  impossible,  because 
during  the  process  the  state  of  the  observer  is  changed. 
**  There  is  an  invincible  necessity  by  which  the  human 
mind  is  capable  of  observing  directly  all  phenomena 
except  its  own."  How,  then,  in  the  name  of  Common 
Sense,  have  we  become  aware  of  the  existence  of 
mental  phenomena  ?  It  would  have  been  more  de- 
fensible had  Kant  and  Comte  said  that  observation 
of  external  phenomena  was  impossible  because  they 
could  only  be  observed  through  the  internal  changes 


86  PEOBLEMS    OF    LIFE   AND    MIND. 

which  they  produced.  By  a  singularly  unpliysio- 
logical  notion,  Comte  thinks  it  possible  for  man  to 
observe  his  passions,  "because  they  have  a  distinct 
seat  from  the  observing  faculties  !  "  but  "  as  to  ob- 
serving the  intellectual  plienomena  during  their  opera- 
tion, that  is  manifestly  impossible."  Perhaps  so  ;  but 
why  ?  Because  "  the  thinker  cannot  divide  himself 
into  two,  one  reasoning  and  the  other  looking  on" 
{Philos.  Positive,  i.  35,  36). 

To  say  that  we  observe  our  passions,  is  to  say  that 
we  are  conscious  of  the  feelings  as  they  arise,  and  can 
recall  them.  The  same  is  true  of  our  intellectual 
states.  The  same  is  true  of  external  phenomena. 
Having  observed  a  fact,  we  ideally  retrace  its  stages ; 
having  been  conscious  of  a  mental  change,  we  ideally 
recall  its  antecedents.  The  movement  we  observe  is 
really  effected  before  our  observation  is  completed :  it 
was  a  series  of  successive  positions  in  space ;  we  re- 
travel  through  that  series  ideally,  connecting  the  point 
of  arrival  with  the  point  of  departure.  It  is  because 
we  can  recall  these  points  that  we  know  there  has  been 
a  movement.  It  is  thus  also  with  the  movements  of 
thought.  The  part  of  pure  observation,  or  direct  he- 
holding,  is  the  same  in  both  ;  and  in  both  it  has  to  be 
completed  by  reflection,  indirect  beholding,  which  re- 
forms the  particulars  into  a  total.  Comte  would  hardly 
have  urged  his  argument  had  he  not  been  biassed  by 
the  metaphor  of  the  "  internal  eye,"  and  by  his  con- 
viction of  the  deplorable  nonsense  which  this  "  internal 
eye  "revealed  to  his  contemporaries  ;  elsewhere  he  has 
clearly  expressed  the  very  principle  I  am  advocating.* 

*  "  Toutes  nos  speculations,  ineme  geomdtriques,  s'y  rapportent  h,  des 
phSnomenes  qui  ne  sauraient  etre  iram^diatement   explores.     On  n'y 


THE    STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  87 

66.  We  are  not  to  loosen  our  hold  of  the  indis- 
pensable instrument  Introspection  because  it  is 
limited  in  its  range.  It  may  be  only  applicable  to 
subjective  changes,  and  need  the  co-operation  of 
Observation,  which  is  only  ai)plicable  to  objective 
changes  ;  both  may  be,  are,  indispensable,  and  both 
have  the  same  common  ground  in  the  sentient  organ- 
ism. TJie  feelings  externalised,  and  ideally  connected 
with  an  External  Order  or  Not-self,  constitute  objec- 
tive consciousness  in  the  perception  of  things,  facts, 
events.  The  feelino^s  no  lone^cr  externalised,  but 
ideally  connected  with  the  Inner  Life  or  Self,  consti- 
tute subjective  consciousness  in  the  perception  of 
states,  changes,  results.  The  antithesis  between  facts 
and  feelings,  Physis  and  JEsthesis,  is  logical  and 
necessary  ;  but  it  is  a  logical  artifice,  not  a  psychical 
reality.  Both  modes  of  Feeling  must  be  referred  to 
one  and  the  same  Sensorium  ;  their  modality  is  due 
to  the  modes  of  stimulation.  The  various  stimula- 
tions of  the  organs  only  become  feelings  in  so  far  as 

pent  propreinent  voir  que  des  directions  simultan^es  ou  successives, 
d'apres  lesquelles  I'esprit  doit  construire  la  forme  ou  le  mouvement  que 
Voeil  rCapu  emtrasser."— Comte:  Politique  Positive,  i.  500.  Precisely  this 
is  the  construction  of  a  mental  process. 

As  a  specimen  of  the  nonsense  allnded  to  in  the  text,  take  the  follow- 
ing declaration  from  Victor  Cousin,  the  most  accredited  of  Comte's 
contemporaries  ;  "  La  m^thode  psychologique  consiste  a  s'isoler  de  tout 
autre  monde  que  celui  de  la  conscience,  pour  s'etahlir  et  s'orienter  dans 
celui-la,  oh.  toute  est  r^alite,  mais  oti  la  r^alitd  est  si  diverse  et  si  d(ili- 
cate  "  {Fragments  Philosophiques,  preface).  Although  crassly  ignorant 
of  every  science.  Cousin  had  no  misgiving  in  magisterially  formulating 
the  principles  of  scientific  Method.  He  was  quite  at  ease  in  speculation 
because  he  had  never  undertaken  the  rude  labour  of  research  ;  and  he 
addressed  audiences  equally  at  their  ease,  equally  flattered  at  being 
absolved  from  the  drudgery  of  investigating  facts,  by  the  promise  of  a 
more  valid  enlightenment  from  simply  looking  in  upon  what  seemed 
passing  in  their  own  minds. 


88  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

tliey  call  the  Sensorium  into  operation.  There  all  the 
processes  are  blended,  integrated,  and  in  certain  rela- 
tive intensities  become  states  of  Consciousness ;  in 
lesser  intensities,  states  of  Subconsciousness ;  and  in 
still  lower  degrees  of  relative  intensity,  states  of  Un- 
consciousness. We  distinguish  Vision  from  Touch, 
and  both  from  Hearing,  as  modes  of  Sensibility,  and 
assign  each  mode  to  its  special  organ  of  excitation ; 
but  we  do  not  suppose  for  each  a  different  Sensorium. 
In  like  manner  we  distinguish  between  the  feelings 
which  arise  from  external  stimuli  and  those  which 
arise  from  internal  stimuli ;  changes  in  us  that  are 
referred  to  changes  outside,  and  changes  that  are 
referred  to  changes  inside  ;  but  it  is  only  thus  that 
objective  and  subjective  consciousness  are  distin- 
guishable. The  object  or  thing  is  a  group  of  feel- 
ings, occasioned  in  us,  we  believe,  by  a  substance 
which  is  part  of  the  great  whole — Nature.  The  per- 
ception, as  a  subjective  state,  is  a  group  of  feelings, 
occasioned,  we  believe,  by  another  substance,  which  is 
also  a  part  of  the  great  whole — Nature.  Even  those 
philosophers  who  believe  that  the  substance  of  the 
Mind  is  not  in  any  way  allied  to  the  substance  of 
objects,  have  still  to  admit  that  mental  and  physical 
phenomeim  are  only  accessible  "to  us  through  Feeling  ; 
the  divisions,  therefore,  which  we  establish  remain 
from  first  to  last  divisions  'of  feelings. 

67.  If  this  seems  too  subtle  for  practice,  too  meta- 
physical for  inductive  science,  we  may  fall  back  on 
the  plainest  fact  of  experience,  which  assures  us  that 
states  of  consciousness,  whatever  their  origin,  are 
feelings  capable  of  being  ?'e-felt  in  the  forms  of  images 
and  memories.      Here  is  the  answer   to  those  who 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  89 

puzzle  themselves  with  the  question,  How  can  the 
mind  think  itself  thinking,  or  the  eye  see  itself  see- 
ing ?  and  then  declare  that  the  mind  cannot  observe 
its  own  operations.  The  fact  is  that  the  mind  does 
observe  its  operations — and  precisely  in  the  same  way 
that  it  observes  any  other  operations.  Because  they 
axe  felt  and  re-felt  under  varying  conditions,  and  are 
capable  of  being  discriminated,  classified,  generalised, 
and  experimentally  modified,  they  are  data  for  scien- 
tific constructions.  One  example  shall  suflSce.  We 
are  quite  sure  that  we  remember  past  events,  and 
can  retrace  their  order  of  occurrence ;  this  is  ah 
operation  ;  but  we  are  equally  sure  that  we  remember 
having  rememhered ;  this  is  consciousness  of  the 
operation.  The  operation  having  been  performed 
many  times,  and  under  very  difi"erent  conditions,  it  is 
generalised  and  abstracted  as  a  mental  function, 
Memory,  having  its  peculiar  laws. 


•woStoSK^k 


CHArTER  YI. 

LIMITATIONS    OF   THE    INTROSPECTIVE    METHOD. 

68.  Having  vindicated  the  claim  of  Introspection  to 
a  place  in  scientific  Method,  an  aid  without  which 
all  the  facts  of  Observation  would  be  as  meaningless 
as  the  words  on  a  printed  page  to  the  eye  of  one  in- 
capable of  interpreting  the  signs,  we  have  now  to  in- 
quire into  tlie  validity  of  the  claim  set  up  for  it  by  cer- 
tain psychologists,  who  hold  it  to  be  the  only  ej0ficient 
instrument  of  research.  On  a  first  glance  it  seems 
obvious  that  a  science  of  the  facts  of  Consciousness 
can  only  be  constructed  from  data  directly  revealed 
in  Consciousness.  ''  To  understand  the  mind  and  its 
operations  we  must  look  within,  and  watch  those 
operations  in  ourselves,  they  being  necessarily  un- 
observable  from  without."  Plausible  as  this  appears, 
it  rests  on  the  double  error  of  restricting  the  science 
to  the  facts  of  Consciousness,  and  to  the  observation 
of  processes  in  the  individual  mind. 

69.  I  have  already  pointed  out  the  ambiguity  of 
the'  term  Consciousness,  which  means  both  Sentience 
in  general  and  a  particular  Mode  of  Sentience.  It 
is  the  latter  meaning  which  the  term  commonly 
carries  in  psychological  discussion,  though  not  with- 
out frequent  use  of  the  former.  A  great  gain  in 
clearness  would  be  to  substitute  the  term  Experience 


THE   STQDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  91 

whenever  tlie  subject-matter  of  Psycliology  is  treated 
of.  Consciousness  in  its  usual  acceptation  is  too 
limited  :  it  excludes  many  unconscious  processes 
"which  are  induhitably  mental,  and  which,  since  Leib- 
nitz directed  attention  to  them,  have  been  recognised 
as  essential  to  every  theory  of  the  soul.  In  1846, 
Cams  boldly  affirmed  that  "  the  key  to  unlock  all  the 
problems  of  Consciousness  is  to  be  sought  in  the  Un- 
conscious." *  The  paradox  loses  its  strangeness  and 
becomes  luminous  if  we  extricate  it  from  the  con- 
tradictoriness  of  its  terms,  and  translate  it  into  the 
expression  of  the  constant  and  definite  relation  be- 
tween function  and  organ,  between  mental  and  bodily 
states.  Thus  translated,  the  formula  will  run  some- 
what in  these  terms  :  The  key  to  unlock  all  the  pro- 
blems of  mental  activity  is  to  be  sought  by  studying 
each  strand  of  observation,  organic  facts  and  mental 
experience,  the  Mechanism  and  its  History. 

We  are  thus  made  aware  of  the  existence  of  pro- 
cesses in  the  sentient  organism  which  belong  as  such 
to  the  psychological  order,  are  facts  of  Sentience,  and 
yet  are  unconscious  ;  and  because  they  are  uncon- 
scious, they  lie  outside  the  range  of  Introspection,  to 
fall  within  that  of  Observation  and  Inference.  They 
belong  to  objective  science  and  must  be  studied 
there,  not  in  the  personified  negation,  a  mystic  Un- 
consciousness, t 

*  Repeated  by  him  in  the  opening  of  his  Vergleichende  Psychologie, 
1866.  The  idea  has  been  worked  out  with  great  extravagance  by 
Hartmann  in  his  Philosophie  des  Unbewussten. 

t  "  II  est  jusqu'a  present  etabli  que  tout  jugement  conscient  est 
la  conclusion  d'une  s^rie  de  jugements  enfouis  dans  I'inconscience,  et 
qu'ainsi,  pour  leur  etude,  le  sens  intime  ne  pent  nous  6tre  d'aucun 
secours.  Les  jugements  inconscients  appartiennent  au  pass^  de  notre 
individu,  et  comnie  ce  passe  se  perd  k  son  tour  dans  celui  de  I'espfece 


92  PEOBLEMS    OF    LIFE    AND    MIND. 

70.  Consciousness  is  too  limited  a  term.  Experi- 
ence, on  the  contrary,  is  comprehensive  of  all  sentient 
facts.  While  there  is  a  contradiction  in  speaking  of 
''unconscious  sensations,"  there  is  none  in  speaking 
of  "  unconscious  experiences  ;  "  these  take  their  place 
among  the  mental  modifications  acquired  through  in- 
dividual history.  Experience  has  the  further  incal- 
culable advantage  of  transcending  the  facts  of  indi- 
vidual feeling  and  including  those  of  the  race ;  so 
that  while  we  cannot  be  said  to  be  conscious  of  what 
passes  in  the  mind  of  another,  we  can  and  do,  through 
Observation  and  Inference,  and  that  sympathetic  in- 
ward movement  which  may  be  called  mental  conta- 
gion, receive  it  as  an  element  in  our  Experience  ;  and 
the  experiences  of  millions  of  men  co-operate  in  the 
determination  of  the  thoughts  and  acts  of  the  in- 
dividual. 

In  view,  therefore,  of  the  ambiguity  of  the  term 
Consciousness,  we  may  adopt  that  of  Experience  ;  but 
as  it  will  be  difficult  to  avoid  altogether  a  term  which 
has  obtained  such  wide  circulation,  some  of  its  am- 
biguity may  be  escaped  by  distinguishing  between 
objective  consciousness  and  subjective  consciousness, 
to  mark  the  mental  operations  which  are  mainly 
directed  to  objects  from  the  operations  mainly  directed 
to  the  feelings.  Objective  consciousness  would  then_ 
designate  M^hat  Leibnitz  calls  those  ''perceptions  dont 
on  ne  s'aper9oit  pas" — that  is  to  say,  the  aptitude 
of  mind  in  which  we  are  contemplating  things  or 
events  as  such,  and  not  as  changes  in  us,  or  as  feel- 
nous  voil^  conduit  a  recherclier  les  premisses  d'un  jngement  actuel 
dans  les  actes  intellectuelles  des  premiers  6tres  sensibles." — Delbceuf: 
La  Psychologie  comme  Science  Naturelle,  1876,  p.  77. 


THE   STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  93 

ings.  These  external  changes  must  be  recognised  as 
no  less  truly  in  the  sphere  of  Consciousness,  since 
they  are  only  present  to  us  as  changes  of  Feeling.* 
But  their  significance  to  us  is  attached  to  the  Not- 
ourselves.  It  is  only  when  they  are  viewed  from  the 
personal  side  that  they  become  psychological  facts. 
The  movements  of  the  planets,  the  combinations  of 
gases,  the  structure  and  functions  of  organisms,  are 
objects  of  physical  and  biological  science,  and  as  such 
lie  outside  the  domain  of  Psychology.  But  these 
may  be  studied  from  the  subjective  side,  as  feelings 
and  relations  of  feelings,  how  we  know  them,  and 
how  they  are  related  :  they  then  become  psychological 
facts.  The  consciousness — experience — which  in  the 
one  case  had  an  objective  attitude,  in  the  other  case 
has  a  subjective  attitude.  It  was  consciousness — 
feeling — experience — in  both  cases. 

71.  Some  reader  here  may  ask  :  In  what  does  the 
study  of  objective  consciousness,  thus  explained,  differ 
from  Physiology  ?  Physiology  and  Psychology,  I 
repeat,  though  respectively  concerned  with  the  same 
organic  phenomena,  are  distinguished  in  that  the 
former  treats  primarily  of  the  Mechanism  whereby 
the  functions  are  effected,  the  other  of  the  functions 
themselves,  and  how  they  are  related.  The  objective 
facts  of  the  Mechanism  and  its  operations  belong  to 
Psychology  when  viewed  in  relation  to  subjective 
Experience,  that  is,  when  the  material  mechanism  is 
interpreted  in  terms  of  the  mental  mechanism.     For 

*  This  distinction  has  been  employed  bj'  Professor  Baix:  "Are  we 
conscious  in  any  shape  when  engaged  exclusively  upon  the  object 
world  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  we  are,  and  I  designate  this  the  object- 
consciousness,  to  distinguish  it  from  the  elements  of  the  subject-con- 
sciousness."—  The  Emotions  and  the  Will,  3d  ed.  p.  546. 


94  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

example,  a  false  perception  may  be  interpreted  by  a 
diseased  condition  of  the  organs  :  it  is  then  a  physio- 
logical fact ;  or  it  may  be  interpreted  as  an  error  of 
judgment,  the  premisses  not  having  their  normal 
position  in  the  context  of  experience :  it  is  then  a 
psychological  fact. 

Unconscious  processes  cannot,  of  course,  fall  within 
the  range  of  Introspection.  They  are,  however,  ob- 
servable in  their  results,  and  iuterpretable  by  reflec- 
tion. If  we  have  formed  a  conclusion  or  performed 
an  action  unconsciously,  we  may  discover,  on  ana- 
lysing it,  that  it  could  not  have  been  performed  with- 
out the  co-operation  of  sentient  and  logical  processes 
such  as  we  recognise  in  conscious  operations.  Some 
writers  think  that  such  actions  belong  to  Physiology, 
because  they  are  unconscious,  and  are  due  to  organic 
states.  They  belong  to  Physiology  or  to  Psychology, 
according  to  the  point  of  view  from  which  they  are 
regarded.  The  events  do  not  change  their  character 
with  our  change  of  view.  The  organic  state  and  the 
sentient  state  are  the  same  state  under  diiFerent 
aspects.  The  proof  that  the  unconscious  events  were 
of  the  psychological  order  is  twofold  :  first,  that  they 
were  processes  in  a  sentient  organism  ;  secondly,  that 
their  genesis  was  from  conscious  processes.  The  same 
proof  is  ready  for  the  so-called  "  unconscious  sensa- 
tions." We  are  often  quite  unaware  of  the  external 
stimulus  and  the  consequent  stimulation,  yet  are 
made  aware  of  both  by  some  after-effect.  Fechner 
says  that  opposite  his  bed  there  is  the  black  fun- 
nel of  the  iron  stove  conspicuous  against  the  bright 
wall,  which  is  the  first  object  visible  when  he  opens 
hi«  eyes  in  the  morning.     Very  often  he  does  not  see 


THE  STUDY  OP  PSYCHOLOGY.  95 

this — that  is  to  say,  he  has  objective  experience  of 
the  fact,  but  is  subjectively  unconscious  of  it,  i.e.,  he 
is  subjectively  occupied  with  some  other  feeling ;  yet 
he  sometimes  notices  that  if  accidentally  he  closes  his 
eyes  he  becomes  aware  of  a  vivid  image  of  this  funnel 
(a  negative  image),  which  is  clear  proof  that  the 
sensory  stimulation  produced  its  normal  effect  on  the 
organism,  though  this  passed  unconsciously  when  sub- 
merged in  the  flood  of  stronger  waves. 

72.  Helmholtz,  after  adducing  examples  of  habitual 
unconsciousness  in  normal  sentient  processes,  which 
may  become  conscious  by  attention  properly  directed, 
remarks  that  we  are  wont  to  interpret  sensations 
mainly  in  their  objective  relations,  as  means  of  direct- 
ing our  actions  and  knowing  the  external  order ; 
their  subjective  aspects  are  mainly  interesting  in  a 
scientific  view,  and  would  greatly  interfere  with  the 
ordinary  use  of  our  senses  were  they  attended  to. 
Hence  it  is  that  while  we  attain  to  an  extraordinary 
delicacy  and  certainty  in  objective  observation,  we 
not  only  fail  to  attain  this  in  subjective  observation, 
but  acquire  in  a  high  degree  the  faculty  of  entirely 
disregarding  it."'"  We  have  already  admitted  that 
Introspection  is  scientifically  defective,  in  that  while 
its  disclosures  are  absolutely  certain  they  are  never 
exact,  and  are  alw^ays  individual,  never  general.  They 
do  not  admit  of  being  measured  by  sharply  defined 
standards  of  comparison  ;  they  may  be  discriminated, 
named,  and  classified ;  they  cannot  be  numbered, 
measured,  compared.  They  have  no  common  mea- 
sure, only  a  common  nature.  One  feeling  may  be 
more  intense  than  another;  it  may  be  like  another  in 
*  Helmholtz  :  Physiol.  Optih,  432. 


96  PROBLEMS    OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

an  indefinite  degree ;  we  can  never  say  "how  much 
more"  nor  "  how  like."  There  can  be  no  equation, 
except  through  the  substitution  of  objective  standards. 
So  that  it  is  only  by  having  recourse  to  Observation 
that  we  can  interpret  the  results  of  Introspection  in 
terms  of  exact  science,  as  it  is  only  by  Introspection 
that  we  can  interpret  the  significance  of  Observation 
by  the  context  of  experience. 

73.  We  might  disregard  the  want  of  exactness,  and 
point  to  the  compensating  condition  of  certainty, 
were  it  not  that  Introspection,  in  its  direct  operation, 
is  limited  to  the  states  of  the  individual  observer. 
By  looking  inwards  he  can  only  see  what  passes  in  his 
mind ;  but  Psychology  is  a  science  of  the  human 
mind,  not  of  any  individual  mind.  No  science  can 
be  founded  on  single  specimens :  it  formulates  general 
laws,  not  cases.  The  individual  observer  has  his 
idiosyncrasies,  peculiarities  belonging  to  his  organism 
and  education  ;  these  have  to  be  eliminated  or  reduced 
to  law.  If  the  sexual  tendency  is  weak  in  him,  and 
the  aptitude  for  abstract  speculation  strong,  he  will 
greatly  err  in  making  himself  the  standard,  and  by  it 
interpreting  the  motives  of  others.  If  he  has  been 
reared  in  a  medium  of  high  civilisation,  he  will  find 
in  his  mental  structure  organised  judgments  that  seem 
elementary  principles,  which,  nevertheless,  he  may 
learn  to  be  entirely  absent  from  the  minds  of  men 
reared  in  other  times  and  countries ;  what  are  intui- 
tions for  him  are  inconceivable  to  them.'"*      An  in- 

*  "  Many  conceptions,"  says  Kant,  "  arise  in  our  minds  from  some 
obscure  suggestion  of  experience,  and.  are  developed  to  inference  after 
inference  by  a  secret  logic  without  any  clear  consciousness  either  of  the 
experience  that  suggests  or  the  reason  that  develops  them."  Until 
those  beliefs  that  have  grown  up  in  the  dark  recesses  of  the  soul  have 


/ 


THE   STUDY   OP   PSYCHOLOGY.  97 

quiry  into  the  genesis  of  his  sentiments  and  opinions 
would  assure  him  that  his  mind  was  the  product  of  a 
history ;  and  with  this  assurance  he  must  conclude 
that,  since  his  history  has  not  been  precisely  that  of 
other  men,  their  minds  cannot  be  precisely  like  his 
own.  His  consciousness,  therefore,  cannot  be  the 
standard ;  it  is  only  material  for  science  in  so  far  as 
it  is  in  general  agreement  with  the  consciousness  of 
fellow-men.  By  striking  off  what  is  individual  in 
each,  we  may  get  at  a  conception  of  what  is  common 
to  all.'"  It  is  thus  we  learn  approximately  to  esti- 
mate the  operation  of  motives  and  logical  procedures, 
not  only  in  ourselves  but  in  others.  By  including 
various  races  of  men  aud  various  stages  of  culture, 
supplementing  these  by  zoological  observations  and 
physiological  inductions,  we  rectify  in  some  measure 
the  deficiencies  inherent  in  Introspection,  and  reach 
the  solid  data  for  a  general  science. 

74.  I  shall  perhaps  be  told  that  no  psychologist 
ever  doubted  this — none  ever  proposed  to  formulate 
the  general  laws  from  his  own  individual  experiences. 
But  in  that  case  the  Introspective  Method  forfeits  its 
claim  to  be  the  exclusive  Method  of  Psychology  ;  and 
I  further  ask,  In  that  case  what  becomes  of  the  asser- 
tion so  constantly  advanced,  that  the  phenomena  of 

been  "broncjht  into  the  light  of  conscious  reason  we  can  have  no  confi- 
dence in  tlieir  validity.  And  very  often  there  is  a  certain  reluctance  to 
Buch  a  critical  operation,  especially  in  the  case  of  conceptions  that  have 
grown  with  our  growth,  and  become,  as  it  were,  an  essential  part  of  our 
habits  of  thought.  Hence  it  is  that  the  profound  philosopher  so  often 
"becomes  a  sopliist  to  defend  the  illusions  of  his  youth," — Cited  by 
Caird  :  Philosophy  of  Kant,  p.  151. 

*  Except  that  idiosyncrasies  throw  the  light  of  possibility  over  abnor- 
mal workings  of  the  organism,  and  may  thus  have  a  value  analogous  to 
tliat  of  pathological  cases. 

VOL.  III.  y 


98  PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AKD  MIND. 

Consciousness  are  limited  to  our  inner  sense,  no  man 
being  able  to  observe  what  passes  in  the  mind  of 
/'  another  ?  Of  two  things  one  :  either  the  thoughts 
'  and  feelings  of  other  men  are  inaccessible  to  us,  in 
which  case  Psychology  is  impossible ;  or  they  are 
accessible  to  us,  in  which  case  another  Method  must 
be  followed  beside  that  of  Introspection. 

In  §  5 1  we  touched  on  the  question  of  accessibility, 
and  saw  that  the  feelings  and  thoughts  of  others  were 
accessible  to  us,  precisely  in  the  way  that  all  which 
is  not  ourselves  is  accessible ;  their  objective  expres- 
sion being  interpreted  by  our  feelings.  It  is  certain 
that  I  cannot  have  the  feelings  of  another,  since  I 
cannot  he  that  other.  But  I  can  know  that  other, 
and  know  that  his  feelings  are  like  my  own,  as  he  is 
like  me.  I  am  forced  to  pass  out  of  my  own  subjec- 
tive sphere  whenever  I  regard  the  known  not  as  feel- 
ings but  as  objects ;  yet  all  objects  are  interpreted  as 
feelings  or  signs  of  feelings.  What  is  accessible  to 
me  on  the  objective  side  is  not  its  subjective  aspect; 
therefore  I  cannot  know  your  feelings  as  subjective 
facts,  but  I  can  know  them  objectively.  I  can  ob- 
serve the  effect  of  certain  stimuli  on  your  senses,  and 
the  effect  of  certain  moral  suggestions  on  your  actions. 
I  see  you  reacting  as  I  myself  react ;  I  hear  you  speak- 
ing as  I  myself  speak,  reasoning  as  I  reason,  loving 
as  I  love,  tremblino;  as  I  tremble.  In  Literature  and 
Art  there  are  expressed  the  thoughts  and  feelings 
which  I  can  interpret  by  my  own.  I  am  certain  that 
the  truths  of  exact  science  are  apprehended  by  you 
as  by  me ;  and  I  am  as  confident  in  my  knowledge  of 
the  laws  of  mental  operation  being  the  same  in  you 
and  in  me  as  I  am  in  my  knowledge  of  the  external 


THE    STUDY    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.  99 

order.  Kant  implies  this  when  he  maintains  that 
"  not  only  is  inner  experience  produced  in  the  same 
way  as  outer  experience,"  but  also  that  "  it  is  secon- 
dary and  dependent  upon  outer  experience,  so  that  we 
can  only  have  consciousness  of  our  own  inner  states 
as  such,  in  contrast  with  and  relation  to  a  world  of 
external  objects."  * 

75.  If,  then,  it  is  indispensable  that  Psychology 
should  formulate  the  laws  of  the  human  mind,  and 
not  simply  classify  the  individual  states,  the  feelings 
and  thoughts  of  others  must  be  accessible ;  and  if 
these  are  not  accessible  on  their  subjective  side, 
access  must  be  sought  on  their  objective  side.  We 
must  quit  Introspection  for  Observation.  We  must 
study  the  mind's  operations  in  its  expressions,  as  we 
study  electrical  operations  in  their  effects.  We  must 
vary  our  observations  of  the  actions  of  men  and 
animals  by  experiment,  filling  up  the  gaps  of  observa- 
tion by  hypothesis.  When  the  facts  are  known,  and 
their  conditions  are  known,  so  that  experimentally 
the  facts  are  reproducible,  the  aim  of  research  is 
reached  ;  the,  doctrine  may  then  be  constructed. 

And  this  leads  us  to  remark  on  the  absolute  in- 
capacity of  Introspection,  even  were  its  range  co- 
extensive with  psychical  phenomena.  There  is  some- 
thing naive  in  the  idea  that  simply  watching  the 
changes  in  Consciousness  will  reveal  the  complexities 
of  the  phenomena  and  the  laws  of  change,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  conditions  which  determine  the  plieno- 
mena.  No  science  can  be  constructed  out  of  data 
furnished  by  observation  of  the  phenomena  as  they 
pass.     We    observe   results,  and   analyse  these  into 

•  Cairo,  p.  287. 


100       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

their  components  ;  we  complete  the  visible  order  by 
the  invisible.  Of  what  avail  was  the  observation  of 
falling  bodies  ?  Millions  upon  millions  of  observa- 
tions under  innumerable  varieties  of  circumstance  left 
men  blind  to  the  essential  and  invariable  conditions 
of  a  fall,  Newton  imagined  and  then  proved  the 
hypothesis  that  these  conditions  were — mass  and 
distance  from  the  earth's  centre:  these  two  invari- 
ables  were  expressed  in  the  law  of  gravitation.  From 
that  time,  observation  of  falling  bodies  has  been 
fruitful  and  the  fact  intelligible. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE   FREEDOM   OF   THE   WILL. 

7Q.  And  here,  in  order  to  exemplify  the  illusoriness 
of  the  Introspective  Method  when  pursued  exclusively, 
I  am  tempted  into  a  slight  digression.  The  advocates 
of  Free  Will  appeal  to  Introspection,  and  assert  that 
the  verdict  of  Consciousness  is  unequivocally  in  favour 
of  this  freedom.  "  Sir,"  said  Johnson,  in  his  charac- 
teristic way,  "we  hiow  the  will  is  free,  and  there's 
an  end  of  the  matter." 

In  certain  relations  the  verdict  of  Consciousness,  as 
I  have  elsewhere  said,  is  the  highest,  the  ultimate 
authority.  No  adverse  proof  can  overturn  my  cer- 
tainty that  I  feel  this  or  think  that.  I  feel  a  stinging 
sensation  in  my  foot.  No  certainty  can  be  more  ab- 
solute. I  think  that  an  animal  is  stinging  me.  Again 
it  is  an  absolute  certainty  to  me  that  such  is  my 
thought.  So  far  Consciousness  has  a  simply  direct 
supremacy,  and  Introspection  is  but  another  name  for 
it.  But  the  conditions  or  causes  of  my  sensation  arc 
not  given  in  my  consciousness  :  my  thought  requires 
to  be  tested  by  observation,  and  the  supposed  animal 
being  non-existent,  analysis  may  have  beforehand  dis- 
closed various  causes  of  a  stino^ine^  sensation,  one  of 
which  may  agree  with  the  conditions  of  my  case. 

Now,  in  relation  to  the  freedom  of  the  will,  what 


102  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

does  Consciousness  actually  tell  us  ?  It  tells  us  that 
we  choose ;  that  out  of  several  contemplated  courses 
we  make  choice  of  one.  But  choosing,  like  a  stinging 
in  the  foot,  is  an  experience  which  may  be  analy- 
tically reduced,  and  its  conditions  tested  by  observa- 
tion. That  we  are  conscious  of  choosins;  does  not 
prove  that  our  exercise  of  choice  is  equivalent  to 
Free  Will,  when  this  term  is  used  to  signify  that 
mental  actions  can  go  on  apart  from  the  general 
system  of  sequences.  All  the  massive  evidence  to 
be  derived  from  human  conduct,  and  from  our  prac- 
tical interpretation  of  such  conduct,  points  to  the 
conclusion  that  actions,  sensations,  emotions,  and 
thoughts  are  subject  to  causal  determination  no  less 
rigorously  than  the  movements  of  the  planets  or 
the  fluctuations  of  the  waves.  Indeed,  no  modern 
thinker  of  any  worth  would  affirm  that  our  volitions 
are  uncaused,— are  freed  from  the  inexorable  subjec- 
tion to  conditions.  The  question  is,  What  are  the 
conditions  ?  While  admitting  that  the  strongest 
motives  determine  the  actions,  we  all  recognise  that 
our  freedom  consists  in  our  power  of  choice  among 
conflicting  motives,  and  it  is  this  power  which 
endows  a  motive  with  its  superior  energy.  We  feel 
that  we  are  free  to  choose,  and  know  that  the  rejected 
motives  might  have  been  selected  motives.  Over  and 
above  the  particular  motives,  the  individual  volitions, 
we  are  conscious  of  a  Will,  a  Personality,  which  de- 
termines these  to  be  what  they  are. 

77.  No  sooner  do  we  quit  the  metaphysical  for  the 
biological  point  of  view,  and  regard  Volition  as  a 
function  of  the  organism,  than  the  asserted  freedom 
is  seen  to  fall  within  the  limits  of  determinism  as  a 


THE    STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  103 

particular  case  of  the  general  law  of  causation.  It  is 
Avith  freedom  as  with  chance.  When  we  say  some- 
thing happens  by  chance,  we  do  not  mean  that  it  had 
no  conditions ;  we  mean  that  tbe  conditions  are  un- 
foreseen, unknown,  out  of  the  regular  order  of  appear- 
ance. It  is  by  such  chance  that  one  black  ball  is 
grasped  among  many  white  balls ;  but  tlie  hand 
was  moved  in  this  particular  direction  by  rigorous 
conditions.  Because  we  do  not  know  what  these 
were,  and  because  we  know  that,  so  far  as  general- 
ised laws  are  concerned,  other  conditions  might  have 
operated  and  other  balls  been  chosen,  we  call  the 
selection  an  accident.  The  organism  is  a  part  of 
Nature,  and  is  swept  along  in  the  great  current  of 
natural  forces.  But  the  organism  is  also  a  system  of 
forces,  and  this  system  has  within  itself  the  condi- 
tions of  its  special  actions  ;  just  as  our  world  is  a 
part  of  Nature,  yet,  being  a  system,  its  movements  are 
in  some  sense  independent  of  the  solar  system.  The 
vessel  which  is  swept  onwards  by  the  waves  does  not 
determine  the  individual  movement  of  the  sailors. 
Each  sailor  knows  that  he  moves  with  the  vessel,  but 
knows  also  tliat  he  is  free  to  move  to  and  fro  on  deck. 
The  voluntary  actions  are  actions  of  the  organism. 
On  the  physical  side  no  one  can  doubt  that  every 
stage  is  rigorously  determined  by  the  co-operant  con- 
ditions ;  the  physical  mechanism  is,  indeed,  very  im- 
perfectly known,  but  we  are  quite  sure  that  there  is  no 
freedom  (in  the  sense  of  indetermination)  in  its  action. 
On  the  mental  side  we  have  the  subjective  correlates 
of  these  objective  processes  :  every  element  in  Sen- 
tience is  represented  by  a  corresponding  element  in 
cerebral  re-arrangement,  all  chancres  in  Feelino-  beino; 


104  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

neural  tremors  and  groupings  of  tremors.  To  suppose 
that  when  several  conflicting  motives  arise  there  is 
no  corresponding  struggle  among  neural  groups,  and 
that  when  a  choice  is  made  there  is  no  corresponding 
neural  arrangement,  is  to  assume  that  Will  is  not  the 
function  of  the  organism,  but  an  independent  entity. 

78.  Analysis  of  a  voluntary  action  exhibits  an  in- 
tention, an  effort,  and  a  motor  result :  three  different 
stages  of  Feeling,  any  one  of  which  may  exist  sepa- 
rately, or  in  other  combinations.  We  may  intend  to 
perform  an  act,  but  make  no  effort  to  realise  the 
intention,  which  then  remains  merely  a  cerebral 
rehem^sal  of  the  act ;  we  may  make  the  effort,  but 
be  unable  to  execute  the  act,  or  may  arrest  it  when 
begun.  The  organism,  solicited  by  a  variety  of  stimu- 
lations which  excite  a  variety  of  nascent  impulses, 
can  only  discharge  in  one  motor  effect  at  each  mo- 
ment, that  one  being  the  resultant  of  the  composition 
of  forces.  All  these  nascent  impulses  are  unrealised, 
although  present  as  states  of  Sentience,  more  or  less 
conscious,  and  each  is  capable  of  becoming  a  motor 
or  motive  under  other  combinations.  In  psycho- 
logical language,  the  resultant  is  the  chosen  motive, 
and  is  conditioned  by  three  determinants, — 1°,  The 
nature  of  the  stimulus ;  2°,  The  momentary  state  of 
the  mind  ;  3°,  The  individuality  of  the  person. 

Now  Consciousness,  while  revealing  the  fact  of 
hesitation  and  choice,  tells  us  that  out  of  several  im- 
pulst3S  one  has  prevailed,  but  does  not  tell  us  that  this 
one  prevailed  owing  to  <?a;^ra- organic  conditions  ;  and 
if  it  seems  to  tell  us  that  some  other  might  have  been 
chosen,  this  illusion  is  explicable.  While  obeying  the 
prevailing  imj^ulse,  we  are  conscious  and  sub-conscious 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  105 

of  simultaneous  solicitations  in  different  directions  ; 
in  recallinof  the  event,  we  recall  some  of  the  nascent 
impulses  which  were  in  conflict ;  and  recalling  thus 
the  rejected  motives,  we  recognise  in  each  a  motive 
which  was  formerly,  and  may  again  be,  selected.  This 
reflection  on  our  mental  operations  gives  the  con- 
sciousness of  variahilitij  in  impulse,  and  the  persua- 
sion that  we  could  have  chosen  any  one  of  those 
rejected.  But  the  persuasion,  being  interpreted, 
means  that  under  the  given  conditions  an  action 
"  might  have  been  "  difierently  determined  : — this 
"  might  have  been  "  is  the  imaginary  displacement  of 
the  actual  conditions  in  favour  of  others.  When  it  is 
said,  '*  We  might  have  chosen  another  motive  had 
we  so  willed,"  the  meaning  really  is,  that  another 
motive  would  have  prevailed  had  it  been  stronger 
at  the  moment  ;  and  the  sympathetic  emotion,  the 
dread  of  wrongdoing,  the  vision  of  evil  consequences, 
or  the  ennobling  resolve,  would  then  have  sufficed  to 
determine  us. 

79.  The  motor-impulse  in  a  hungry  dog,  though 
strong,  is  not  strong  enough  to  make  him  steal  a  bit 
of  meat,  if  at  the  same  time  he  remembers  the  beat- 
ings which  similar  indulgences  have  brought  upon 
him.  The  conflict  between  hunger  and  fear  is  decided 
by  the  energy  of  his  hunger  or  the  vividness  of  his 
revival  of  past  beatings.  Very  often  the  strength 
of  the  primary  impulse  is  imperious.  A  fox  wildly 
running  from  the  dogs  has  been  known  to  step  aside 
to  seize  a  duck  on  its  path.  Gall  relates  the  case  of 
a  robber  stealing  the  silver  snuff'-box  of  the  priest  to 
whom  he  was  making  a  dying  confession,  habitual  im- 
pulse blinding  him  to  the  futility  of  his  theft.      The 


106  PROBLEMS    OF    LIFE   AND    MIND. 

educated  man  foresees  remote  consequences,  and  this 
vision  enters  into  tlie  complex  of  his  motives.  The 
state  of  choosing  is,  in  physiological  language,  an  un- 
resolved reflex  ;  the  choice  is  the  resultant. 

80.  Owing  to  the  complexity  of  the  conditions, 
there  is  a  variability  in  human  actions  which  renders 
them  difficult  of  prediction ;  and  Mr.  Sully  well 
remarks  that  "  to  the  majority  of  minds  inability  to 
predict  seems  a  mark  of  the  absence  of  objective  uni- 
formity "  (Sensation  and  Intuition,  1874,  p.  131). 
Even  in  our  own  case,  it  is  often  impossible  to  detect 
what  were  the  conditions  which  made  one  motive 
dominant ;  the  more  so  because  some  of  them  lie  in 
the  unconscious  region.  Spinoza  thought  that  men 
believe  themselves  to  be  free  because  they  are  con- 
scious of  their  actions  but  ignorant  of  the  causes.  Yet 
there  is  something  more  in  it  than  this.  For  we  are 
ignorant  of  the  causes  which  determine  the  particular 
direction  in  the  growth  of  leaves  and  limbs,  the 
colours  and  dispositions  of  animals,  &c.,  yet  we  never 
doubt  that  causes  are  in  operation,  and  that  for  each 
particular  detail  a  particular  determinant  was  needed. 
What  is  this  something  more  ?  It  is  our  conception  of 
a  Personality,  which  is  not  limited  to  the  momentary 
feelings,  and  not  exhausted  in  the  individual  act. 
The  mere  feeling  does  not  suffice.  We  are  conscious 
of  certain  operations  of  our  organs,  which  we  do  not 
assign  to  volitional  impulses.  In  a  voluntary  act 
there  is  the  intervention  of  the  ive :  that  is  to  say, 
accompanying  the  feeling  of  the  act  itself  there  is  a 
vague  feeling  of  the  act  as  one  manifestation  of  a 
variously  manifesting  Self  This  conception  of  a 
Self  or  Personality  as  superior  to  and  directing  each 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  107 

particular  manifestation  is  another  aspect  of  the  rela- 
tion of  Organism  and  organs.  Once  formed,  it  comes 
to  represent  an  abstract  Will  which  dominates  con- 
crete volitions ;  so  that  although  each  particular 
volition  is  assigned  to  a  motive,  and  is  thus  admitted 
within  the  rigorous  limits  of  determinism,  the  mo- 
tives themselves  are  said  to  be  under  the  powcp  of 
a  Will  which  is  not  determined.  This  is  tenable  on 
the  understanding  that  a  metaphysical  abstraction 
has  no  physical  determinants,  and  that  the  antithesis 
of  mental  and  mechanical  is  something  more  than  an 
antithesis  of  aspects ;  but  it  is  not  tenable  when  we 
reduce  the  abstraction  to  its  concretes  in  subjective 
and  objective  terms,  and  view  the  Will  as  the  gene- 
ralised expression  of  all  volitional  impulses. 

81.  The  biologist  recognises  the  fact  of  delibera- 
tion, choice,  which  Consciousness  testifies  ;  recognises, 
moreover,  that  each  particular  choice  is  determined 
partly  by  the  fixed  conditions  of  the  Mechanism,  and 
partly  by  the  variable  conditions  of  Experience  ;  there- 
fore that  moral  causation  is  conspicuously  different 
from  physical  causation,  though  both  are  examples 
of  necessary  sequence,  both  are  incorporations  of  the 
operant  conditions.  That  we  have,  within  certain 
limits,  a  power  of  arresting  and  redirecting  the  action 
of  our  organs  or  the  current  of  our  thoughts, — that 
we  can  acquire  such  a  mastery  over  these  as  to  exe- 
cute with  ease  actions  which  the  motive  Mechanism 
was  incompetent  to  perform, — that  with  such  control 
we  can  place  ourselves  under  the  tutelage  of  Expe- 
rience, and  so  enlarge,  and  even  alter,  the  primary 
tendencies,  till  what  was  once  the  immediate  reflex 
of  the   Mechanism  becomes  abhorrent  and  is  sup- 


108        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

pressed — all  these  facts  of  self-formation  are  as  fully 
recognised  by  the  biologist  as  by  the  metaphysician ; 
and  the  biologist  conceives  that  they  admit  of  an 
intelligible  explanation  without  recourse  to  extra- 
oro:anic  ao^ents. 

82.  So  long  as  consciousness  of  freedom  mea.ns 
consciousness  of  deliberation,  it  simply  means  that 
the  sentient  organism  is  capable  of  various  simulta- 
neous excitations.  We  are  as  "free"  to  perform  one 
action  rather  than  another,  as  we  are  **  free  "  to  think 
one  conclusion  rather  than  another;  that  is  to  say, 
each  action,  each  thought,  is  possible  under  certain 
conditions,  and  will  be  produced  whenever  these  con- 
ditions are  untrammelled.  Out  of  various  ideas  which 
emerge  at  the  moment,  a  conclusion  is  logically,  in- 
evitably reached.  Opinion  is  "free"  in  the  sense 
that  another  conclusion  would  have  been  reached  had 
the  premisses  been  different ;  but  opinion  is  not  free 
to  reach  another  conclusion  while  the  premisses  re- 
main unchanged.  We  are  free  to  admit  or  to  reject 
a  space  of  n  dimensions  ;  no  man  is  free  to  think  what 
he  pleases  of  the  square  of  the  hypothenuse  when  the 
geometrical  demonstration  has  been  followed.  If 
your  conclusion  differs  from  mine  on  any  given  point, 
it  is  because  the  premisses  have  not  the  same  signifi- 
cance to  you  as  to  me.  Our  common  freedom  con- 
sists in  this  possibility  of  the  same  symbols  having 
different  significates,  as  our  free  will  consists  in  the 
possibility  of  the  same  sentient  excitations  having, 
under  different  states  of  the  organism,  different  resist- 
ances. 

^^—'83.  Volition  is  Desire  realised.     The  state  of  feel- 
ing which,   prompting  to  action,  is  yet   from   some 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  109 

cause,  internal  or  external,  unable  to  find  its  active 
response,  is  the  blind  or  confused  stirring  we  call 
Desire.  If  accompanied  by  a  cerebral  rehearsal  of 
the  act, — which  means  a  more  or  less  clear  apprecia- 
tion of  the  means  by  which  the  act  may  be  efi'ected, 
— and  if  this  rehearsal  is  succeeded  by  a  motor 
impulse,  it  is  called  Volition.  We  may  desire  the 
unattainable,  we  do  not  will  it. 

No  one  supposes  that  our  desires  are  free.  Such 
freedom  as  there  is  consists  in  the  conflict  of  desires, 
and  the  choice  determined  by  the  predominance  of 
the  most  urgent ;  and  this  predominance  is  partly 
due  to  the  strength  of  the  immediate  stimulus,  and 
partly  to  the  vision  of  possibilities  and  consequences 
which  the  desire  awakens.  It  is  here  that  Desire 
passes  into  Volition ;  so  that  however  powerful  a 
stimulus  may  be  in  exciting  a  desire,  if  it  be  con- 
nected in  Experience  with  painful  consequences  we 
are  thereby  educated  to  resist  the  desire,  or  to  avoid 
incurring  the  stimulus  which  awakens  it.  Because 
the  Will  is  thus  the  abstract  expression  of  the  pro- 
duct of  Experience,  it  is  educable,  and  becomes  amen- 
able to  the  Moral  Law,  as  architecture  is  amenable  to 
mechanical  laws,  and  as  thinking  is  amenable  to 
knowledge. 

84.  The  whole  dispute  has  arisen  from  two  specu- 
lative mistakes  :  first,  the  personification  of  the  ab- 
straction Will  as  something  apart  from  the  total  of 
volitional  impulses,  and,  therefore,  removed  from 
their  conditions  ;  secondly,  the  analytical  artifice  of 
detaching  a  particular  feeling  from  the  comj)lex  of 
co-existent  feelings,  and  supposing  that  this  feeling 


110       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

has   an   unvarying   value,   whereas   its   value,   as   a 
motive,  is  always  relative.     Because  a  man  will 

"  Scorn  delights  and  live  laborious  days  " — 

will  endure  the  privations  of  hunger  and  the  pains  of  - 
cold  and  fatigue,  that  he  may  achieve  some  deed  of 
succour,  some  object  of  ambition,  or  some  moun- 
taineering feat,  we  do  not  suppose  that  he  is  insensible 
to  fatigue,  cold,  and  hunger,  or  that  he  cannot  enjoy 
the  rejected  delights.  Each  of  these  motives  will, 
under  other  conditions,  determine  their  appropriate 
responses ;  but  under  the  vision  of  some  prospective 
end  these  impulses  are  suppressed.  It  is  in  this  way 
that  our  Personality  intervenes  to  shape  our  conduct: 
an  abiding  sense  of  our  dignity,  or  of  our  duty,  or  a 
loving  devotion  to  another's  welfare,  suffices  to  re- 
strain all  the  solicitations  wbich  are  seen  to  be  incon- 
sistent with  it,  precisely  as  a  vision  of  being  beaten 
restrains  the  hungry  dog.  It  is  thus,  as  Thomas  h, 
Kempis  says,  occasiones  homineni  fragilem  nonfaciunt, 
sed  qualis  sit,  ostendunt.  This  is  the  only  sense  in 
which  we  can  say  that  the  conscious  Ego  is  the  cause 
of  the  determining  motives. 

85.  In  conclusion,  let  us  note  that  the  old  dispute 
about  liberty  and  necessity  is  now-a-days  resolved  '' 
/into  a  question  of  whether  the  Mind  is  a  function  of 
the  Organism,  or  an  entity  operating  on  and  through 
the  Organism.  By  necessity  may  be  understood 
either,  1°,  A  rigorous  invariableness  of  sequence,  ii're- 
spective  of  any  variations  in  the  conditions,  or,  2°,  An 
invariableness  in  the  conditions  themselves  :  a  clock- 
work necessarily  acts  in  only  one  way  if  it  act  at  all. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  Ill 

Now  the  testimony  of  Consciousness  is  invoked  to 
prove  that  such  invariableness  is  not  the  case  with 
our  actions,  and  that  the  Organism  is  to  a  great  ex- 
tent self-reguhxtively  variable.  Owing  to  the  popular 
misconception  of  the  term  Mechanism  when  applied 
to  organisms,  there  is  the  notion  that  if  our  actions 
are  mechanically  determined  they  must  have  the 
fixity  of  invariableness  observed  in  machinery ;  and 
since  Consciousness  assures  us  that  our  actions  are 
not  thus  invariable,  the  conclusion  reached  is  that 
they  cannot  be  mechanically  determined.  Our  con- 
sciousness tells  us  we  are  free,  in  the  sense  that 
we  have  a  range  of  motives  surveyed  by  a  Personality 
which  is  the  incorporation  of  our  past  experience,  and 
carries  the  prevision  of  alternative  futures.  It  does 
not  tell  us  that  our  motives  are  unconditioned,  nor 
does  Biology  permit  us  to  conclude  that  Conscious- 
ness, Self,  Personality,  is  unconditioned.  The  only 
question  therefore  is.  What  are  the  conditions  ?  It 
is  the  task  of  the  psychologist  to  specify  them. 


CHAPTEK  VIII. 


OBJECTIVE    ANALYSIS. 


86.  It  is  thus  clear  that  our  Method,  while  availing 
itself  of  the  indispensable  aid  of  subjective  analysis, 
has  also  to  call  upon  objective  analysis  on  a  very  ex- 
tensive scale,  since  every  mental  fact  is  at  once  a  state 
of  Feeling  and  a  state  of  the  Organism.  While  the 
order  and  genesis  of  mental  facts  are  not  wholly  laid 
bare  to  Introspection,  their  significance  is  wholly  hid- 
den from  Observation.  The  physiologist  could  not  stir 
a  step  in  interpreting  the  facts  of  the  sentient  me- 
chanism were  he  not  incessantly  translating  them  into 
facts  of  Feeling.  Without  the  illumination  of  Intro- 
spection he  could  see  nothing  but  molecular  move- 
ments in  neural  processes.  Thus  do  subjective  and 
objective  analysis  go  hand  in  hand.  Each  has  its 
advantages  and  limitations.  The  physiologist  ob- 
serves and  classifies  the  activities  of  the  organism, 
assigning  these  grouped  classes  to  particular  systems 
and  organs,  reducing  thus  the  facts  of  function  to 
facts  of  structure.  Havino;  succeeded  in  reducinsc 
particular  functions  to  general  functions,  and  func- 
tions to  properties  of  tissues,  he  attempts  a  synthetic 
reconstruction  in  which  the  facts  observed  are  seen  to 
be  consequences  of  the  factors. 

The  procedure  of  the  psychologist  is  analogous,  but 


THE    STUDY    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.  113 

from  another  station.  He  studies  the  facts  and  laws 
of  Experience,  to  which  the  facts  and  laws  of  the 
Mechanism  are  subordinate.  He  therefore  begins 
by  observing  and  classifying  the  various  forms  of 
Experience,  reducing  them  to  elementary  Feelings, 
and  these  again  to  their  conditions,  namely,  the 
organic  activities  and  the  cosmic  and  social  environ- 
ment. What  Anatomy  is  to  the  physiologist,  Physi- 
ology is  to  the  psychologist.  If  the  former  limited 
his  science  to  the  observation  of  the  salient  activities 
without  reference  to  structure,  he  would  conclude 
that  Eespiration,  Digestion,  Locomotion,  Vocal  Ex- 
pression, Manipulation,  &c.,  were  due  to  so  many  in- 
dependent principles,  and  would  never  suspect  that 
the  Sentient  Mechanism  was  involved  in  each  of 
these,  no  less  than  in  Sensation,  Emotion,  and  Thought. 
If  the  psychologist  limited  his  science  to  Introspec- 
tion, he  would  conclude — as  indeed  psychologists  have 
concluded — that  Sensation,  Perception,  Emotion,  and 
Volition  are  the  independent  activities  of  different 
agents.  Forced  to  find  some  common  ground  for 
their  dependence  and  unity,  he  would  feign  the  pre- 
sence of  a  Psychical  Principle.  This  substitution 
of  one  mystery  for  another  is  the  metempirical  at- 
tempt to  explain  the  unknown  by  the  inconceivable  ; 
for,  as  Kant  truly  says,  the  Psychical  Principle  can- 
not be  made  the  object  of  positive  thought,  since  we 
have  no  data  for  it  in  our  sensations,  and  we  are  thus 
driven  to  call  in  the  help  of  negatives  to  aid  us  in 
thinking  of  that  which  is  utterly  different  from  all 
that  is  sensible.  Instead  of  seekino:  in  the  orofanism 
the  conditions  of  organic  activities,  psychologists  pre- 
ferred the  fictions  of  imagination,  and  referred  psy- 
VOL.  III.  H 


114        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

chical  plienomena  to  an  abstraction  personified  as  the 
Psycliical  Principle.  An  ingenious  thinker  might  as 
well  detach  all  the  motor  phenomena  observed  in 
organisms — the  walking,  flying,  swimming,  dancing, 
fencing,  &c. — and  erect  these  into  a  separate  science. 
To  explain  the  observations  he  might  invent  a  Motor 
Principle,  which  would  absolve  him  from  all  trouble- 
some study  of  the  motor-organs  and  their  vital  con- 
ditions. His  science  would  have  the  same  value  as 
that  of  the  metaphysical  psychologist. 

87.  It  will,  perhaps,  be  thought  needless  now-a- 
days  to  insist  on  the  necessity  of  studying  the  organ- 
ism, most  recent  works  being  conspicuously  occupied 
with  nerve  cells,  fibres,  and  centres.  There  is  even 
danger  of  the  reaction  against  the  Introspective 
Method  being  carried  too  far.  A  warning,  therefore, 
may  fitly  here  be  suggested.  That  warning  is,  not 
to  place  reliance  on  the  extremely  immature  know- 
ledge of  the  structure  and  functions  of  the  nervous 
system  which  has  hitherto  been  reached,  but  to  accept 
the  statements  of  our  text-books  as  provisional  hypo- 
theses, not  as  secure  data  for  deduction.  Much  of 
what  passes  for  physiological  explanation  of  psycho- 
logical processes  is  simply  the  translation  of  those 
processes  in  terms  of  hypothetical  physiology.  We 
are  indisputably  certain  of  the  facts  of  Feeling,  even 
when  our  subjective  analysis  of  these  into  their  factors 
is  open  to  question ;  but  no  one  who  is  competent  to 
speak  on  the  matter  would  aflirm  that  our  translation 
of  these  into  definite  cerebral  processes  is  at  the  best 
more  than  a  probability.  In  my  previous  volume,  it 
has  been  shown  how  very  far  we  are  from  accurate 
knowledge  of  nerve-tissue,  and  how  contradictory  and 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  115 

chaotic  are  the  attempts  at  localising  particular  func- 
tions in  2:)articular  portions  of  the  nervous  system.  I 
can  never  read  without  a  smile  the  confident  state- 
ments which  credit  certain  nerve- cells  with  the  power 
of  transforming  impressions  into  sensations,  and  other 
cells  with  the  power  of  transforming  these  sensations 
into  ideas — which  assign  Volition  to  one  centre,  Sensa- 
tion to  another,  Perception  to  a  third,  and  Emotion  to 
a  fourth.  As  to  the  minute  anatomy  of  the  nervous 
system,  were  it  as  exact  as  it  is  often  supposed  to  be, 
its  value  to  the  psychologist  would  be  insignificant 
compared  with  the  more  accessible  observation  of  the 
organic  functions.  Unless  illuminated  by  a  study 
of  the  organism  as  a  whole,  investigation  of  nerve- 
cells  will  throw  no  more  light  on  Psychology  than 
investigating  the  molecular  structure  of  iron  rails  will 
explain  the  Kailway  System.  That  a  congested  liver 
w^ill  influence  the  intellectual  and  emotional  processes 
is  a  demonstrable  fact ;  that  a  mental  agitation  wiU 
arrest  digestion  and  cause  palpitation  of  the  heart  is 
also  demonstrable ;  but  that  an  impression  on  the 
skin  has  to  be  transmitted  to  the  optic  thalamus  be- 
fore it  becomes  a  sensation,  and  from  thence  to  the 
cerebral  convolution  before  it  becomes  a  perception, 
is  still  very  far  from  a  demonstrable  fact ;  and  the 
parts  played  by  cell  and  fibre  in  such  transmission 
and  transformation  are  at  present  utterly  imaginary. 
For  any  one,  therefore,  to  propose  an  explanation  of 
mental  processes  by  adducing  imaginary  connections 
between  neural  elements  having  imaginary  proper- 
ties, is  to  explain  the  imperfectly  known  by  the 
unknown. 

88.    I  have  given  so  much   study  to  the  minute 


116        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

anatomy  of  the  nervous  system,  that  I  shall  not  be 
suspected  of  indifference  to  its  future  value,  or  of 
joining  in  the  contemptuous  rejection  which  animates 
those  who  pronounce  it  materialistic — a  rejection  on 
a  par  with  Bacon's  sneer  at  Copernicus  and  Goethe's 
at  Newton  for  their  one-sided  treatment  of  Astronomy 
and  Optics  on  mathematical  methods.  The  union  of 
Physiology  with  Psychology  is  henceforward  assured, 
like  the  union  of  Algebra  with  Geometry,  by  which 
both  sciences  have  been  enormously  improved. 
Lagrange  well  said  that  so  long  as  Algebra  and  Geo- 
metry were  independently  studied,  their  progress  was 
slow  and  their  applications  limited ;  since  their  union 
they  have  given  each  other  support,  and  have  moved 
rapidly  towards  perfection. 

89.  In  objective  analysis  we  seek  to  complete  and 
verify  the  data  of  subjective  analysis.  It  embraces 
observation  of  men  and  animals,  as  organisms  and 
as  units  of  a  society.  The  facts  presented  by  Zoology 
and  History  have  to  be  reduced  to  their  conditions 
in  Physiology  and  Sociology.  Until  this  reduction 
is  effected,  our  observations  only  disclose  symptoms, 
not  causes. 

A  glance  at  the  history  of  Medicine  will  illustrate 
my  meaning.  The  old  pathologists — of  Body  and 
of  Mind — classified  diseases,  abnormal  states  of  the 
organism,  according  to  the  salient  symptoms.  They 
vainly  tried  to  cure  the  diseases  by  attacking  the 
symptoms.  The  method  now  followed  is  that  of 
classifying  diseases,  not  according  to  symptoms,  but 
according  to  functional  derangements ;  and  their 
cure  is  sought  in  the  removal  of  the  conditions  of 
such  derangements.     The  old  plan  was  necessary  so 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  117 

long  as  men  were  very  imperfectly  acquainted  witli 
functions  and  organs.  The  symptoms  were  not  only 
what  obtruded  themselves  on  notice,  they  were  all 
tfiat  could  accurately  be  conceived  ;  they  must  always 
be  the  first  indications  for  research.* 

Progress  of  observation  disclosed  that  similar  symp- 
toms reappeared  in  very  various  combinations,  so 
that  diseases  manifestly  due  to  various  causes  and 
to  derangements  of  widely  different  organs  presented 
many  of  the  same  salient  appearances ;  and  thus, 
when  the  treatment  of  symptoms  was  pursued,  the 
remedy  which  proved  beneficial  in  one  case  proved 
disastrous  in  another.  The  modern  pathologist  en- 
deavours to  assign  the  symptoms  to  organic  disturb- 
ances, direct  or  sympathetic.  These  disturbances  may 
be,  l**,  structural — a  lesion  of  tissue  or  an  alteration 
oi  its plasmode ;  f  2°,  functional — an  excess  or  arrest 
of  normal  activity  of  the  organ  by  direct  or  indirect 
excitation.  When  he  has  acquired  definite  knowledge 
of  normal  and  abnormal  organic  conditions,  he  has 
acquired  a  corresponding  knowledge  of  the  diseases 
in  which  certain  symptoms  appear ;  and  when  he  has 
learned  the  means  of  modifying  these  conditions, 
restoring  the  organ  to  its  normal  activity,  he  has 
learned  all  that  can  be  learned  of  cures. 

*  The  mistake  of  accepting  symptoms  for  causes  is  natural  but  un- 
scientific. The  gross  errors  it  leads  to  may  be  seen  in  abundant 
examples.  Here  is  one  : — There  is  no  symptom  of  Insanity  more  con- 
spicuous than  Hallucination  ;  it  is,  nevertheless,  occasionally  observed 
in  people  who  are  not  in  the  slightest  degree  insane,  and  it  is  not  always 
observed  in  the  insane.  If  a  man  believes  that  he  is  "  possessed  "  by  a 
demon  having  entered  into  his  body,  he  is  said  to  be  insane,  and 
generally  is  so  ;  yet  hundreds  of  perfectly  sane  ignorant  people  have 
believed  themselves  "  bewitched  "  or  that  a  malevolent  stranger  has  cast 
"  the  evil  eye  "  on  them,  the  effect  of  which  will  be  their  destruction. 

t  For  an  explanation  of  this  see  Physical  Basis  of  Mind,  p.  47. 


118  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

90.  Psychology  must  be  pursued  on  a  similar 
plau.  Hitherto  its  classifications  and  its  applications 
to  Education  and  Insanity  have  been  too  largely 
founded  on  the  consideration  of  symptoms  instead  of 
the  organic  conditions.  Naturally  so ;  the  pedagogue 
and  the  alienist  had  little  else  to  direct  them.  The 
salient  manifestations  they  could  note ;  of  the  latent 
causes  they  were  ignorant.  They  could,  therefore, 
only  teach  and  treat  by  rude  empirical  methods.  A 
change  is  happily  gaining  ground,  at  least  among 
instructed  alienists,  who  now  universally  recognise 
mental  aberrations  as  dependent  not  on  sin,  not  on 
spiritual  perversion,  but  on  functional  derangements 
having  organic  causes.  They  no  longer  think  of 
curing  Insanity  by  punishment  or  by  sermons ;  they 
treat  it  as  a  malady.  The  pedagogue  has  not  yet  got 
so  far.  The  traditional  conception  of  the  Mind  as 
something  different  from  the  activities  of  the  or- 
ganism determines,  implicitly  or  explicitly,  his  method 
of  Education.  He  tacitly  assumes  that  all  minds  are 
specifically,  no  less  than  generically,  alike,  and  he 
therefore  teaches  the  same  lessons  in  the  same  way 
to  all. 

ANIMAL   PSYCHOLOGY. 

91.  Once  recognising  the  necessity  of  observing 
the  sentient  activities  of  men  and  of  animals,  and  of 
interpreting  these  by  reference  to  their  organic  con- 
ditions, what  more  natural  suo'srestion  than  that  our 
study  should  begin  with  animals  ?  The  comparative 
simplicity  of  their  organisms  and  their  manifestations 
would  seem  to  mark  them  as  furnishino;  the  safest 
prolegomena  to  Human  Psychology.    I  have  already 


THE   STUDY   OP   PSYCHOLOGY.  119 

stated  (in  the  preface  to  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind) 
that  ill  1860  I  was  led  to  collect  materials  with  this 
view,  but  that  fuller  consideration  showed  it  to  be 
impracticable.  To  show  why  it  was  impracticable 
will  be  an  answer  to  my  Russian  critic,  M.  Wyrouboff, 
who  {La  Philosophie  Positive,  1874,  p.  106)  objects 
to  my  "  sin  against  scientific  method"  in  not  proceeding 
from  phenomena  that  are  general  and  simple  to  those 
that  are  special  and  complex ;  I  ought,  he  thinks, 
to  have  made  the  exposition  of  the  simpler  cerebral 
phenomena  in  animals  precede  that  of  the  more  com- 
plex phenomena  in  man.  This  was  my  own  opinion 
till  experience  proved  its  mistake.  I  found  myself 
constantly  thwarted  by  the  fallacies  of  anthropomor- 
phic interpretation.  It  was  impossible,  even  approxi- 
mately, to  eliminate  these  before  a  clear  outline  of  the 
specially  human  elements  was  secured.  For  example, 
we  see  bees  at  work,  and  see  that  they  do  not  sting 
the  keeper,  but  sting  any  stranger  who  may  interrupt 
them ;  our  interpretation  is  that  they  kiiow  their 
keeper  and  are  angry  when  disturbed.  Seeing  them 
act  as  we  act  under  analogous  circumstances,  we 
interpret  their  actions  as  we  interpret  our  own.  Yet 
to  credit  them  with  Knowledge  and  Emotion  like  our 
own  is  manifestly  erroneous  when  we  compare  the 
conditions  in  the  human  Mechanism  and  Experience 
which  cannot  be  present  in  bees.  If  we  say  the  bees 
hiow  the  bee-keeper,  we  apply  the  human  vocabulary 
to  insect  organisms.  In  that  vocabulary  Knowledge 
is  the  formula  of  Feeling.  The  bees,  although  they 
no  doubt  have  Feeling,  have  not  the  same  sentient 
mechanism,  consequently  have  not  the  same  Feeling 
as  we  have,  and  assuredly  have  not  the  same  formula. 


120       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

Grantinof,  therefore,  that  the  bees  have  sentient  acti- 
vities  which  may  be  called  Knowledge  and  Anger, 
it  is  certain  that  these  must  be  very  different  from 
such  activities  in  ourselves  ;  and  until  we  have  gained 
a  clear  insight  into  the  special  conditions  which 
operate  in  human  activities,  it  is  hopeless,  even  ap- 
proximately, to  estimate  the  nature  of  the  activities 
from  which  such  special  conditions  are  absent.  There 
is  a  general  resemblance  between  the  sensitiveness  of 
the  bee  and  that  of  the  man ;  between  the  agitation,  as  a 
symptom,  of  the  thwarted  bee  and  that  of  the  thwarted 
man;  between  the  stinging  of  the  thwarted  bee  and  the 
striking  of  the  thwarted  man  :  but  the  causes  operat- 
ing are  not  the  same  in  each,  the  effects  cannot  be 
the  same ;  and  although  we  may  speak  of  the  agita- 
tion of  the  bee,  it  is  only  anthropomorphism  to  speak 
of  its  anger.  If  the  bee  is  cut  in  two,  its  hinder 
segment  will  sting  as  vigorpusly  as  before ;  does  this 
hinder  seo-ment  feel  anger  ?  That  the  semient  is 
sensitive,  I  admit,  and  this  reflex  stinging  is  the  con- 
sequence. But  between  sensitiveness  and  emotion — 
between  cerebral  excitation  and  auger — the  distance  is 
great.* 

•  It  is  this  distance  which  is  constantly  overlooked.  Thus  in  a 
recent  physiological  work  of  repute  the  sensitiveness  of  the  bee's  seg- 
ment is  adduced  in  proof  that  "chaque  segment  paralt  conserver  pour 
son  propre  conapte  la  faculte  de  sentir,  de  se  mouvoir  volontairement, 
sciernment,  et  meme  de  sirriter.  Chaque  groupe  ganglionnaire  partiel 
ainsi  forme  devient  un  centre  partiel  qui  se  suffit  et  possede  les  princi- 
pales  propri6tes  etfacultes  de  I'ensemble.  Que  va  dire  la  Metaphysique? 
Une  intelltyence  qui  se  coupe  h,  coups  de  ciseaux  ! "  On  reading  this 
passage  a  metaphysician  would  surely  remark  that  nowhere  are  the 
products  of  a  whole  to  be  found  in  any  single  part ;  "the  faculties"  and 
their  generalised  expression  "  intelligence"  can  no  more  belong  to  one 
single  organ,  than  Literature  can  belong  to  the  steam-engine  which 
moves  the  printing-press. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  121 

92.  To  attribute  knowledge  and  emotion  to  bees  is 
either  to  speak  in  metaphors  or  to  follow  the  classi- 
fication by  symptoms.  And  what  is  conspicuous  in 
this  example  is  equally  discernible  in  all  interpreta- 
tions of  animal  feelings.  Anthropomorphism  is  in- 
evitable so  long  as  we  follow  symptoms  and  do  not 
penetrate  to  their  causes.  By  such  procedure  the 
uncultivated  mind  sees  in  all  the  changes  of  Nature 
reflections  of  its  own  states  ;  the  wdnds  "  howl "  and 
the  rivulets  "babble,"  the  thunder  "mutters"  and 
the  planets  "  attract "  each  other.  But  when  the 
mind  passes  from  symptoms  to  causes,  it  recognises 
the  irrationality  of  expecting  the  same  effects  to  be 
produced  by  causes  that  differ.  The  anatomical  in- 
vestigation which  reveals  the  many  and  profound 
differences  between  the  human  and  animal  oro-anisms, 
is  further  emphasised  by  the  psychological  investiga- 
tion which  reveals  the  still  greater  differences  in  the 
Experience  of  men  and  animals,  so  that  in  spite  of 
certain  fundamental  resemblances  the  mental  states  of 
each  are  specifically  unlike. 

93.  To  make  observations  of  animals  really  service- 
able, it  is  necessary  that  we  should  eliminate  all  the 
ascertainable  differences,  and  leave  standing  only 
those  conditions  Avhich  animals  and  men  have  in 
common.  This  of  itself  is  an  arduous  task,  and  when 
completed  would  need  caution  in  application.  We 
must  not  express  the  results  in  other  than  general 
terms ;  we  must  not  attempt  precision  of  statement. 
I  mean,  that  if  we  attribute  feelings  to  both,  we  must 
not  attribute  feelings  of  the  same  complexity  to  both. 
The  anger  of  a  bee  or  the  foresight  of  a  fox  resembles 
the  anger  and  foresight  of  a  man,  much  as  the  vision 


122       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

of  a  mollusc  resembles  the  vision  of  a  bird,  or  as  the 
mathematical  faculty  of  a  savage  who  cannot  count 
beyond  five  resembles  that  of  an  undergraduate  who 
can  wield  the  Calculus. 

94.  It  is  clear  that  we  should  never  rightly  under- 
stand vital  phenomena  were  we  to  begin  our  study  of 
Life  by  contemplating  its  simplest  manifestations  in 
the  animal  series  ;  we  can  only  understand  the  Amoeba 
and  the  Polype  by  a  light  reflected  from  the  study  of 
Man.  It  is  also  clear  that  we  shall  never  form  even 
an  approximate  idea  of  the  mental  states  of  Animals 
until  we  have  a  theory  of  those  of  Man ;  and  such  a 
theory  must  be  constructed,  not  out  of  a  classification 
of  symptoms,  but  out  of  a  reduction  of  symptoms  to 
their  causes. 

This  does  not  seem  to  have  been  apprehended  by 
the  various  eminent  writers  who  have  attempted  an 
Animal  Psychology.  Their  researches  have  been 
further  biassed  by  a  secret  desire  to  establish  the 
identity  of  animal  and  human  nature — a  desire  con- 
sequent on  their  reaction  against  the  irrational  efibrt 
of  theologians  and  metaphysicians  to  sever  human 
nature  from  all  community  with  animal  nature.  In 
opposition  to  the  doctrine  that  animals  were  soulless 
machines,  they  insisted  so  strongly  on  the  intelligence 
of  animals  that  they  overlooked  the  conspicuous  dif- 
ferences in  the  conditions  and  results.  They  com- 
mitted no  such  oversight  in  regard  to  Physiology. 
They  knew  that  fish  could  not  run,  having  no  legs, 
and  that  cats  could  not  fly,  having  no  wings  ;  and,  to 
be  consequent,  they  should  have  known  that  animals 
could  not  manifest  certain  psychical  activities  in  the 
absence  of  the  requisite  physiological  and  sociological 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  123 

conditions.  The  animal  without  Language  is  as  in- 
capable of  abstraction,  and  of  what  we  specially  desig- 
nate Intellect,  as,  without  wings,  it  is  incapable  of 
flight.  In  a  social  medium  which  evokes  sentiments 
and  ideas,  the  mental  organism  of  man  acquires 
organs,  capacities,  which  are  impossible  to  the  ani- 
mal, and  these  modify  the  whole  Experience  of  man. 
This  being  the  case,  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  form  even 
an  approximate  estimate  of  the  animal  mind,  because 
we  must  interpret  it  by  our  own  wherever  we  have 
no  clear  vision  of  the  conditions  operating  in  each ; 
and  even  when  we  can  specify  a  difference,  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  estimate  the  result — a  notable  illustration  of 
which  is  the  impossibility  of  accurately  realising 
what  is  the  mental  result  of  congenital  blindness  or 
deafness. 

95.  The  great  advances  which  have  been  made, 
owing  to  the  extensive  studies  of  comparative  Physi- 
ology, naturally  suggested  that  equivalent  advances 
might  be  made  through  studies  of  comparative  Psy- 
chology. The  anatomist  having  traced  a  community 
of  plan  in  the  composition  of  organisms,  and  the 
physiologist  having  traced  a  corresponding  commu- 
nity of  function,  so  that  the  animal  series  came  to  be 
viewed  as  a  graduated  differentiation  of  simpler  into 
more  complex  forms,  and  the  complex  thus  became 
intelligible  in  the  light  of  the  simpler  forms,  the 
psychologist  readily  concluded  that  since  the  mental 
functions  were  organic  functions,  they  also  might 
profitably  be  studied  on  the  comparative  method. 
All  those  animals  that  possessed  a  nervous  system 
would  necessarily  present  the  sentient  functions  of 


124       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

that  system ;  the  system  in  its  simpler  forms  would 
present  the  functions  in  simpler  forms.* 

96.  This  idea  fascinated  me,  as  it  has  fascinated 
others.  And  I  owe  to  it  not  a  little  of  my  scepticism 
respecting  the  classic  views  of  the  brain  as  the  exclu- 
sive organ  of  feeling  and  intelligence  ;  for  the  com- 
parative investigation,  confirmed  by  experiment,  left 
no  doubt  that  animals  which  had  nothing  to  be  called 
a  brain  (except  by  an  extravagant  extension  of  the 
term)  did,  nevertheless,  manifest  several  of  the  func- 
tions classed  under  sensibility  and  even  intelligence, 
which  it  was  a  mere  evasion  to  call  Instinct.  But 
although  comparative  studies  were  of  great  service 
in  enabling  me  to  form  a  conception  of  the  sentient 
mechanism,  they  were  absolutely  misleading  in  rela- 
tion to  the  conditions  of  Experience.  The  fallacies 
of  anthropomorphism  were  not  to  be  escaped;  and 
the  reason  of  this  will  explain  why  comparative 
Psychology  cannot  be  placed  on  the  same  footing 
as  comparative  Physiology.  The  anatomist  and 
physiologist  have  the  same  means  of  investigation 
and  verification,  both  when  studying  the  animal  organ- 
ism and  when  studying  the  human  organism.  The 
issues  and  organs,  the  secretions  and  other  active 
manifestations,  are  objective  facts  which  need  no 
subjective  control  or  interpretation.  That  the 
muscle    of   a  dog,  a  horse,   a   rabbit,  a    frog,  or    a 

*  "  Se  la  facolta  psichica  nei  suoi  element!  eseenziali  si  attribuisce  all' 
uomo  exclusivamente,  il  regno  aiiimale  si  annienta,  e  1'  uomo  stesso 
rimane  un  enigma  insolubile" — a  just  remark,  but  followed  by  this 
■which  is  questionable^"  se  soltanto  a  lui  ed  agli  animali,  quelle 
vegetale  rimane  un  mistero  ancor  piu  inesplicabile." — Tito  Vignoli  : 
JSaggio  di  Psicologia  Comparata,  1877,  p.  69.  Whence  his  conclusion  that 
rightl)'  to  understand  the  mind  of  man  we  must  also  investigate  the 
mind  of  plants. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  125 

fisli  has  the  property  of  contractility ;  that  the 
mucous  membrane  of  a  dog,  horse,  rabbit,  or  frog  has 
the  property  of  secretion  ;  that  animals  move  by 
means  of  contracting  muscles,  and  digest  by  means  of 
the  secretions,  are  facts  which  admit  of  no  doubt.  It 
is  quite  otherwise  when  the  psychologist  compares  the 
sentient  phenomena  presented  by  animals  with  those 
presented  by  man.  The  external  appearances  may 
be  very  similar,  but  what  assurance  has  he  that  the 
internal  feelins^s  are  similar  in  each  ?  A  doo^  fastens 
on  a  rat ;  the  rat  struggles  and  bites;  the  dog  adjusts 
his  movements  to  every  movement  of  his  prey, 
growls  with  fierce  rage,  eats  and  digests  the  flesh, 
rejecting  the  indigestible  hair,  claws,  &c.  We  inter- 
pret the  actions  of  the  dog  by  our  knowledge  of 
similar  actions  in  ourselves.  We  suppose  the  dog  to 
have  feelings  like  our  own,  and  that  these  feelings 
prompt  and  accompany  his  movements.  And  our 
supposition  is  warranted  by  our  knowledge  of  the 
great  resemblance  between  the  organs  and  tissues 
involved  in  these  actions  efi"ected  by  the  dog  and  by 
man.  From  the  objective  similarity  of  the  effects  we 
conclude  a  subjective  similarity  in  the  causes,  and 
inversely  from  the  similarity  in  the  organic  causes 
we  conclude  a  similarity  in  the  subjective  feelings. 
So  far  all  is  clear.  But  now  observe  the  polype 
clutching  a  worm  or  waterflea,  mastering  its  struggles, 
drawing  its  victim  into  its  inside,  and  then,  having 
extracted  its  assimilable  juices,  rejecting  the  indi- 
gestible shell  or  skin.  The  actions,  as  objective  facts, 
are  singularly  like  those  of  the  dog  mastering  the  rat ; 
the  results  are  similar.  Shall  we  then  conclude  that 
the  polype  felt  very  much  as  the  dog  felt  ?     Shall  we 


126        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

here  also  conclude  a  similarity  in  the  feelings  to  ex- 
plain this  similarity  in  the  acts  ?  On  proceeding  to 
verify  this  inference,  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  it 
was  precipitate.  From  a  certain  objective  similarity 
we  have  inferred  that  the  two  cases  were  similar 
tlirougliout.  In  this  way  a  spectator  observing  the 
actions  of  Vaucanson's  mechanical  duck  to  be  very 
similar  to  those  of  a  living  duck,  would  infer  that, 
together  with  this  agreement  in  mechanical  conditions, 
there  was  also  an  agreement  in  the  vital  conditions : 
he  would  suppose  that  Vaucanson's  duck  was  alive 
and  had  feelings.  This  inference  he  would  rectify  as 
soon  as  he  learned  that  the  movements  of  Vaucanson's 
duck  were  effected  by  springs  and  wheels,  and  not  by 
living  muscles  and  nerves.  A  knowledge  of  the  vital 
conditions  would  enable  him  to  see  that  the  observed 
similarity  was  limited  to  the  mechanical  aspects  of 
the  two  cases.  And  thus  also,  in  the  case  of  the 
polype  and  the  dog,  a  knowledge  of  the  organic  con- 
ditions rectifies  the  inference  from  observation.  The 
conditions  are  conspicuously  different  in  the  two 
cases.  The  structures  of  the  dog  and  the  polype  have 
only  the  most  general  resemblances  ;  their  mechanisms 
and  experiences  are  so  unlike  that  it  is  only  by  a  vast 
knowledge  of  details  and  a  large  theory  of  organic 
evolution  that  we  can  bring  them  under  one  general 
rubric.  Nor  does  the  difficulty  cease  here.  Observe 
a  sensitive  plant,  the  hairs  of  which  an  insect  touches : 
the  insect  is  clutched,  struggles  vainly,  is  enfolded, 
pressed  down  upon  the  leaf,  which  pours  forth  a 
secretion,  and  the  insect  is  digested,  as  the  waterflea 
and  rat  were  digested,  the  indigestible  materials  being 
rejected.     Shall  we  here  also  recognise  the  presence 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  127 

of  feelings  similar  to  tlie  feelings  in  the  dog  and 
in  ourselves  ?  There  are  distinguished  writers  who 
attribute  a  soul  to  the  plant,  no  less  than  to  the 
animal.  The  hypothesis  lies  wholly  beyond  disproof, 
because  it  lies  wholly  beyond  proof.  But  I  would 
urge,  that  if  we  credit  plant  and  polype  with  souls, 
we  are  bound  by  every  consideration  to  deny  that 
these  souls  are  like  our  own,  beyond  that  general  like- 
ness which  may  be  detected  between  their  organisms 
and  our  own,  when  both  are  resolved  into  differenti- 
ations of  protoplasm.  There  is  a  theoretic  advantage 
in  assigning  Sensibility  to  all  living  organisms,  and 
thereby  giving  unity  to  our  conceptions  of  organic 
phenomena  ;  but  while  fully  recognising  this,  we  must 
not  overlook  the  conspicuous  diversities  of  organic 
phenomena,  and  the  specific  characters  which  result 
from  the  differentiations  of  Sensibility  under  complex 
conditions.  Once  clearly  apprehend  that  every  pheno- 
menon is  a  function  of  its  conditions,  and  you  appre- 
hend that  the  marked  variation  of  the  organic  condi- 
tions presented  by  the  various  animal  structures  must 
produce  marked  dissimilarities  in  sentient  phenomena. 
A  priori,  then,  we  are  certain  that  a  plant  or  a  polyjDe 
cannot  possibly  feel  like  a  dog  or  a  man;  and  although 
we  may  credit  it  with  feeling,  what  the  nature  of  that 
feeling  is  must  remain  entirely  inconceivable  to  us. 

97.  Here,  and  indeed  throughout,  we  have  only 
tbe  positive  data  of  objective  observation  without  the 
control  of  subjective  verification.  How  illusory  may 
be  the  subjective  interpretation  of  animal  actions  is 
apparent  in  the  familiar  fact  that  even  men  may  and 
do  exhibit  the  same  objective  phenomena  when  the 
internal  states  of  feeling  are  different — they  laugh 


128       PROBLEMS  OP  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

and  cry  from  central  agitations  which  have  nothing 
ludicrous  or  pathetic  ;  they  struggle  and  shriek  when 
feeling  nothing  whatever  of  the  pain  which  normally 
excites  such  actions.  We  know  this  is  so,  for  they 
inform  us  that  it  is  so,  and  we  have  ourselves  ex- 
perienced it.  But  the  animal  cannot  tell  us  the  feel- 
ings that  underlie  its  manifestations  ;  and  since  we 
have  positive  evidence,  first,  that  the  objective  facts 
are  not  always  interpretable  in  the  same  terms  of 
feeling ;  secondly,  that  every  feeling  is  a  function  of 
its  sentient  conditions,  varying  with  these  conditions, 
who  shall  venture  to  say  what  may  be  the  precise 
mental  state  even  of  the  highest  ape  ?  Ilis  me- 
chanism is  in  many  details  unlike  our  mechanism  ; 
this  of  itself  implies  a  dissimilarity  in  the  sentient  con- 
ditions the  range  of  which  we  cannot  estimate.  But 
still  greater  is  the  difference  between  his  Experience 
and  ours ;  and  the  influence  of  that  factor  is  quite 
incalculable. 

98.  On  these  grounds  we  can  only  assign  a  very 
subordinate  place  to  Comparative  Psychology.  It  has 
its  place,  and  furnishes  objective  analysis  with  im- 
portant data ;  and  at  times  affords  us  a  clue  even 
in  subjective  analysis.  But  it  can  only  mislead  re- 
search if  its  limitations  are  ignored,  and  if  we  unre- 
strainedly interpret  animal  actions  in  the  light  of 
human  consciousness.  The  psychology  of  animals 
may  be  simpler  than  that  of  man,  but  it  is  assuredly 
less  intelligible.  Now  the  effective  procedure  of  in- 
vestigation is  not  that  of  passing  from  the  simple 
phenomena  to  the  complex,  but  from  the  more  easily 
accessible  to  the  less  easily  accessible, — from  the 
better  known   to   the   less    known.      This   principle 


THE    STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  129 

determines  tlie  selection  of  the  physiological  inves- 
tigation of  the  Mechanism,  in  cases  where  the  phe- 
nomena are  more  easily  accessible  and  the  inductions 
more  easily  verifiable,  than  through  the  analysis  of 
Experience  ;  and  vice  versa. 

Our  Method  is,  therefore,  pari  passu,  objective 
and  subjective.  Animal  Psychology  offers  a  vast 
field  for  experiment  and  verification  ;  it  is  rich  in 
suggestion  respecting  the  Functions,  though  of  little 
value  respecting  the  Faculties ;  it  presents  us  with 
certain  analyses,  so  to  speak,  made  without  disturb- 
ance of  the  organism  ;  but,  assign  what  value  to  it 
we  may,  it  cannot  take  precedence  of  Human  Psy- 
chology, nor  can  its  facts  be  intelligible  until  seen  in 
the  light  reflected  from  the  human  mind. 

DIFFERENCES   OF   ANIMAL  AND    HUMAN. 

99.  The  gi'eat  Aristotle  studied  animal  life  with  a 
keen  appreciation  of  the  fundamental  community  and 
specific  diversity  between  men  and  animals.  Sub- 
sequently, theological  dogmas  arrested  this  line  of 
inquiry,  and  metaphysical  dogmas  consolidated  the 
prejudice.  Descartes  threw  his  great  authority  into 
the  scale,  and  started  the  idea  that  animals  were 
sentient  machines  without  intelligence,  because  with- 
out souls.  In  spirit  and  in  conception  this  cele- 
brated explanation  of  the  animal  phenomena  was 
vicious,  but  it  seized  one  true  and  important  aspect 
in  recognising  the  operation  of  mechanical  principles, 
and  another  in  roughly  marking  the  broad  distinc- 
tion between  animal  and  human.  Descartes  fully  ad- 
mitted, what  his  successors  quickly  forgot,  and  what 

VOL.  III.  I 


130       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

liis  adversaries  rarely  appreciated,  that    the   animal 
mecbanism  was  a  sentient  mechanism.      This  at  once 
disposes  of  the  absurd  interpretation  that  animals  are 
machines,  and,  therefore,  cannot  feel.     Although  not 
verifiable,   the    opinion   is   tenable   that    animals,   if 
sentient,    have    little    or   no    consciousness   of  their 
sentience.      I    mean,    that   their   actions   may   have 
a   sentient   mechanism,    and   yet   never   evolve   the 
secondary  states  of  reflected  sentience.     It  is  neces- 
sary that  the    animal  should  perceive  objects  :  it  is 
not  necessary  that  he  should  perceive  his  own  per- 
ceptions as  objects.     To  hear  a  sound  is  to  have  a^ 
sensation;  to  attend  to  its  concomitant  external  object 
is  to  perceive  that  object;  but  to  attend  to  the  mental 
state  of  sound,  or  to  the  operation  of  perception,  is     IjU' 
another  and  more  com[)licated  process.     We  have  no 
evidence  that  animals  are  capable  of  this ;  and  if  w^e     I 
restrict  Consciousness  to  such  cases,  we  must  deny     I 
consciousness  to  animals.  - — * 

The  Jesuits  Bonjean  and  Darmanson  took  up  the 
idea  of  Descartes  in  its  most  irrational  aspect.  The 
former  declared  that  all  the  animal  manifestations 
which  looked  like  the  operation  of  a  spirit  were  in 
truth  the  operation  of  Satan ;  the  latter  [La  Bete 
Transformee  en  Machine,  1684)  urged  this  dilemma: 
If  animals  have  feelings  and  passions,  there  is  no 
God ;  and  if  the  animal  has  a  soul,  it  is  mortal,  and 
our  soul  is  mortal  (Cakus  :  Vergleichende  PsycJiologie, 
18G6,  p.  20). 

100.  It  was  not  until  the  middle  of  the  last  century 
that  an  earnest  voice  was  raised  in  vindication  of  the 
animal  claims.  The  speaker  was  Reimarus,  the  friend 
of  Lessing.     His  work  is  still  worth  consulting,  though 


THE    STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  131 

it  is  more  concerned  witli  tlie  instincts  tlian  with  the 
higher  phenomena.  At  the  same  epoch,  Georges  Leroy 
wrote  an  agreeable  little  book,  enriched  by  the  per- 
sonal experience  of  a  sportsman.  Frederic  Cuvier 
followed  in  1825  ;  and  in  1840  Scheitlin  attempted  a 
complete  survey.  Recently  we  have  had  the  valuable 
observations  and  collections  of  Houzeau,  Brehm,  and 
the  great  Darwin.""''  All  these  works  are  open  to  the 
objections  urged  in  §§  96  and  97.  I  shall,  however, 
here  confine  my  remarks  to  the  last,  and  endeavour 
in  a  running  commentary  to  bring  out  the  distinctive 
position  of  Human  Psychology. 

^101.  No  reader  will  suppose  that  in  giving  promi- 
nence to  the  distinctively  human  phenomena  I  mean  to 
deny  or  underrate  the  community  which  exists  be- 
tween men  and  animals.  On  the  principles  of  Evolu- 
tion, we  expect  to  find  well-marked  differences  and 
serial  gradations.  When  we  are  tracing  the  serial 
development,  or  taking  a  general  survey  of  organic 
phenomena,  our  attention  is  mainly  fixed  on  the 
resemblances ;  when  we  are  classifying  and  describ- 
ing, our  attention  is  mainly  occupied  by  the  diversi- 
ties. For  Mr.  Darwin's  purpose  it  was  needful  that  he 
should  emphasise  the  position  that  "  there  is  no  funda- 
mental difference  between  man  and  the  higher  animals 
in  tlieir  mental  faculties"  (p.  35).  For  our  purpose 
it  is  needful  to  point   out  that,  while   there    is  no 

*  RsTMARUS  :  AUgemeine  Betrachtungen  ilher  die  Triebe  der  Thiere, 
1760.  Georges  Leroy  :  Lettres  Fhilosophiques  sur  l' Intelligence  et  la 
Perfectihilite  des  Animaux,  1762.  (It  has  been  translated  by  Mrs. 
Richard  Congreve.)  Scheitlin  :  Vers^ich  einer  volhtdndigen  Thier- 
seelenkunde,  2  vols.,  1840.  Houzeau  :  Ji'tudes  sur  les  Facultes  mentales 
des  Animaux,  2  vols.,  1872.  Brehm  :  Das  Thierleben,  last  edition, 
1877.     Darwin:  The  Descent  of  Man. 


132  PROBLEMS    OF    LIFE    AND    MIND. 

fimdamental  difference  in  the  functions  of  the  two, 
there  is  a  manifest  and  fundamental  difference  in  the 
Q,\o\vQ,di  faculties  (according  to  the  definitions  of  §  16): 
men  exhibiting  some  faculties  of  which  animals  have 
not  apparently  even  the  rudiment.  When  Comte 
affirms  that  there  is  nothing  in  Humanity,  the  germs 
of  which  are  absent  from  Animality,  the  assertion 
requires  qualification.  Animals  may  be  said  to  have 
the  germs  of  our  moral  and  intellectual  life  in  some- 
what the  same  sense  as  serpents  have  the  rudiments 
of  our  limbs.  If  the  biologist  recognises  the  many 
points  of  community  in  animal  structures,  the  zooto- 
mist  has  to  insist  on  the  points  of  diversity  ;  and  he 
will  not  admit  that  because  limbs  are  vertebral  ap- 
pendages, therefore  limbs  exist  wherever  a  vertebral 
column  exists.  If  the  psychologist  recognises  in  all 
animals  the  fundamental  facts  of  Sensibility,  he  must 
still  doubt  whether  all  animals  manifest  the  same 
modes  of  Sensibility ;  and  on  this  ground  he  must 
qualify  the  statement  that  because  man  possesses  the 
same  senses  as  the  lower  animals  his  fundamental 
intuitions  must  be  the  same  :  qualify  it  to  the  extent 
that,  in  the  first  place,  the  senses  are  not  the  same, 
but  only  more  or  less  similar  ;  in  the  next  place,  that 
we  have  no  accurate  means  of  ascertaining  the  deo^ree 
of  similarity ;  and  finally,  that  the  intuitions  are  to 
be  referred  to  the  Sensorium,  not  to  the  sense  organs. 
By  way  of  example,  consider  the  organs  of  scent  in 
man,  wolf,  and  dog.  They  are  constructed  on  the 
same  type,  and  are  very  similar  in  detail.  Yet  we 
know  that  the  wolf  and  dog  are  sensitive  to  impres- 
sions inappreciable  by  man,  and  are  utterly  indifferent 
to  fragrancies  which  powerfully  affect  man.     To  these 


THE    STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  133 

animals  the  external  world  seems  a  continuum  of 
scents,  as  to  man  it  is  a  continuum  of  sights.  They 
track  their  invisible  prey  by  scent  as  we  by  sight. 
They  smell,  as  we  see,  the  approaching  or  receding 
prey.  Sensations  of  smell  have,  therefore,  a  different 
influence  on  their  Sensorium,  a  different  significance. 
Pass  now  to  the  organ  of  sight.  As  an  optical  appa- 
ratus it  is  very  similar  in  dog  and  man  ;  but  the 
optical  experiences  of  the  two  are  so  unlike,  that  it 
is  eminently  doubtful  whether  the  dog  has  any  equi- 
valent of  the  sensation  of  colours,  over  and  above 
their  degrees  of  luminosity.  This  conclusion  is  made 
probable  by  the  evidence  we  have  that  even  in  man 
the  fine  distinction  of  colours  is  a  developed  product. 
Animals  distinguish  coloured  objects  by  distinctions 
of  luminous  impression,  but  it  has  yet  to  be  proved 
that  they  distinguish  colours.  All  the  observations 
of  naturalists  respecting  birds  and  insects  being 
attracted  by  colours  demand  reinvestigation.  The 
facts  may  be  explained  sometimes  by  differences  in 
the  luminosity  of  the  objects  and  sometimes  by  the 
odours  of  the  pigments.* 

*  There  seems  good  evidence  that  some  men  born  blind  have  been 
able  to  distiiiguisb  coloured  objects  by* scent  (Goethe  :  Gesch.  d.  Farben- 
lehre,  W.  xxxix.  p.  355),  and  other  men  by  touch.  It  is  also  certain 
that  Daltonians,  who  fail  to  distinguish  scarlet  from  green,  yet  do  not 
confound  objects  thus  coloured.  How  birds  and  insects  discern  objects 
we  do  not  know.  Since  this  was  written,  a  correspondent  in  Nature, 
Oct.  18,  1877,  p.  522,  has  recorded  observations  showing  that  it  is  the 
scent  and  not  the  colour  of  plants  which  attracts  insects.  "  A  bee 
settling  on  a  scarlet  geranium  will  not  go  from  it  to  another  species  or 
variety,  but  gives  its  attention  to  this  particular  variety  only,  irrespec- 
tive of  colour,  whether  scarlet,  pink,  or  white,  never  going  from  a 
scarlet  geranium  to  another  scarlet  flower,  even  if  in  contact."  Other 
correspondents  questioned  this  ;  but  I  think  they  only  showed  that 
insects  could  detect  different  degrees  of  brightness.  The  subject  is  very 
obscure.    It  has  been  treated  by  Sir  John  Lubbock  {Linnoean  Society^s 


134        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

102.  Without  pushing  this  consideration  further, 
we  may  say,  that  granting  a  much  closer  resemblance 
between  the  organs  and  functions  of  animals  and  men 
than  is  demonstrable,  we  should  still  have  to  allow 
for  the  conspicuous  diflferences.  And  were  the  con- 
nate Mechanisms  identical,  there  would  still  remain 
the  immense  diversity  in  the  Experiences  of  the  two ; 
and  it  is  these  which  determine  the  faculties  of  the 
functions,  and  to  a  great  extent  the  quality  of  the 
feelings.  Comte  instructively  observes  that  the  men- 
tal inferiority  of  animals  has  been  much  exaggerated 
for  want  of  distinguishing  sufficiently  between  indi- 
vidual capacities  and  social  results.  In  descending 
the  series  of  organisms,  we  find  the  Experience  and 
the  Mechanism  becoming  simpler  and  simpler,  having 
smaller  range  and  less  development,  till,  on  reaching 
the  lower  stages,  we  come  upon  organisms  to  which 
the  hypothesis  of  their  being  sentient  machines  is  not 
inapplicable.  Moved  only  by  the  immediate  stimuli, 
and  moved  always  in  the  same  way,  they  are  incap- 
able of  what  we  know  as  Experience  :  they  feel  and 
they  react ;  they  never  learn  through  feeling  to  modify 
their  reaction  and  to  anticipate  a  future  result.  Ob- 
serve a  snail,  how  perfectly  its  reactions  resemble 
those  of  a  machine.  Then  pass  upwards  to  the  fish. 
A  fish  feels  the  hook,  and  darts  away,  but,  having 
released  itself  from  the  irritation,  returns  again  and 

Journal,  vols.  xii.  and  xiii.)  with  his  accustomed  patience  and  in- 
genuity ;  but  his  observalions  no  more  prove  that  insects  have  the 
sensation  of  colour  than  simihir  observations  prove  insects  to  have  the 
sensation  of  sound  because  they  react  on  the  stimulus  of  vibrations 
■which  to  us  are  heard  as  sounds.  Insects  cannot  have  sensations  of 
sound  like  those  in  us  produced  by  vibrations  :  they  have  not  an  audi- 
tory organ,  much  less  the  Sensorium  of  man. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  135 

again  to  tlie  bait,  undeterred  by  any  memory  of  past 
feeling  and  a  torn  mouth.  How  different  a  dog  1 
If  he  has  been  hurt  in  an  attempt  to  gratify  some 
desire,  he  approaches  the  object  with  caution,  perhaps 
restrains  his  desire  altogether  by  the  fear  of  the  recur- 
rence of  pain.  The  dog  learns.  The  fish  is  incapable 
of  learning.  Applied  to  fishes  and  animals  of  a  lower 
organisation,  there  is  a  certain  truth  in  what  Buffon, 
following  Descartes,  says  of  all  animals  :  "  L'animal 
est  un  etre  purement  materiel,  qui  ne  pense  ni  ne 
r^flechit,  et  qui  cepcndant  agit  et  semble  se  deter- 
miner." The  error  begins  when  he  adds  :  "  Nous  ne 
pouvons  pas  douter  que  le  principe  de  la  determination 
ne  soit  dans  l'animal  un  effet  purement  mecanique  et 
absolument  dependant  de  son  organisation."  Abso- 
lutely dependent  on  organisation  indeed,  but  therefore 
not  purely  mechanical,  since  the  organisation  is  not 
purely  mechanical ;  and  in  so  far  as  actions  are  depen- 
dent on  organisation,  the  actions  of  animals  are  not 
of  another  order  than  those  of  man.  The  point  of 
departure  is  the  Experience  which  arises  with  a  more 
complex  organisation. 

103.  One  important  consequence  of  this  more  com- 
plex Experience  is  the  evolution  of  that  principle  of 
Eeflection,  generally  called  Consciousness,  that  Inner 
Sense  which  Kant  marks  as  the  distinguishing  attri- 
bute of  man  when  it  makes  its  own  affections  objects 
of  thought  (Werke,  i.  17).  In  how  far  animals  parti- 
cipate in  this  power  of  reflecting  on  what  passes  in 
themselves,  reflecting  on  their  own  operations  and 
distinguishing  the  objective  and  subjective  aspects  of 
the  same,  it  is  impossible  to  say ;  but  the  probabilities 
are  all  against  their  having  more  than  the  faintest 


136  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

rudiments  of  such  experiences.  And  every  psycho- 
logist must  be  alive  to  the  immense  influence  of  the 
power  of  Reflection,  and  the  separation  of  Self  from 
Not-self,  of  objects  from  feelings. 

104:  Insistance  on  the  manifold  points  of  diversity 
need  not  blind  us  to  the  manifold  points  of  com- 
munity. Animals  and  men  are  alike,  though  diffe- 
rent, in  structure ;  they  are  alike,  though  different, 
in  functions.  The  senses,  instincts,  primary  apti- 
tudes are  similar.  The  nutritive  organs,  the  repro- 
ductive organs,  the  sense  organs,  and  the  motor 
organs  are  similar ;  from  whence  it  is  rational  to  con- 
clude a  corresponding  similarity  in  functions.  That 
animals  feel,  and  combine  their  feelings  according  to 
laws  fundamentally  the  same  as  those  which  operate 
in  man,  is  scarcely  to  be  gainsaid ;  but  not  less  cer- 
tainly their  feelings  and  the  results  of  their  combina- 
tions of  feelings  are  more  or  less  diff"erent.  They 
cannot  have  precisely  the  samfe  intuitions  if  the  sen- 
sible elements  of  such  intuitions  are  dissimilar.  If 
animals  have  Logic,  it  is  never  the  Logic  of  Signs, 
which  condense  ideas  in  symbols ;  it  operates  on 
materials  of  an  Experience  which  is  special  to  each 
organism,  and  is  far  more  restricted  in  its  range  than 
that  of  ma;i.  Animals  have  egoistic  impulses  ;  they 
have  scarcely  any  sympathetic  altruistic  impulses 
beyond  the  sexual  and  parental.  They  manifest  a 
certain  tenderness  towards  young  and  small  animals 
(probably  a  derivation  of  the  parental  instinct),  but 
this  tenderness  vanishes  in  the  presence  of  any  ego- 
istic impulse.  Mr.  Darwin  refers  to  Brehm's  female 
baboon,  whose  heart  was  so  capacious  that  she  not 
only  adopted  young  monkeys,  but  even  stole  young 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  137 

dogs  and  cats,  which  she  continually  carried  about. 
Her  kindness,  however,  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  share 
her  food  with  her  adopted  offspring,  at  which  Brehm 
was  surprised,  as  his  monkeys  always  divided  every- 
thing quite  fairly  with  their  own  young  ones.  Here 
we  see  how  the  egoistic  impulses  dominate.  In  the 
human  mother  we  should  find  altruism  raising  the 
maternal  instinct  into  a  maternal  sentiment,  through 
the  intellectual  appreciation  of  the  claims  of  the  help- 
less— her  adopted  child  would  be  fed  before  herself 
Again,  this  baboon  was  one  day  scratched  by  an 
adopted  kitten.  "  Greatly  astonished,  she  examined 
the  kitten's  feet,  and  without  more  ado  bit  off  the 
claws."  This  shows  intelligence  ;  but  it  is  not  an  in- 
telligence which,  profiting  by  experience,  knows  that, 
the  kitten's  claws  are  useful  to  the  kitten,  and  that 
she  could  be  taught  not  to  scratch  her  adopted  mother 
w4th  them.  Language,  which  condenses  the  experi- 
ence of  others,  and  communicates  results  to  tho'se 
who  have  not  personally  experienced  them,  was 
denied  to  the  baboon ;  she  could  only  learn  from 'her 
own '  experience,  Avhich  was  sipiply  of  the  scratching 
action  of  claws. 

105.  The  animal  tends  its  sick  offspring ;  'the 
savage  mother  tries  to  cure  her  sick  child ;  the  civil- 
ised man  devotes  laborious  days  to  succour  any  one 
that  is  sick,  tending  the  wounded  soldier  of  an  alien 
race,  and  passionately  seeking  for , methods  of  cure 
that  may  be  applied  to  all  suffering.  The  law  of 
animal  action  is  Individualism ;  its  motto  is  "  Each 
for  himself  against  all."  The  ideal  of  human  action 
is  Altruism  ;  its  motto  is  "  Each  with  others,  all  for 
each."     "  To  succour  those  who  suffer,"  said  Turgot, 


138  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

''is  the  duty  of  all  and  the  business  of  all."  But  in 
enumerating  the  various  splendours  of  Social  Life  we 
must  not  overlook  its  dark  shadows.  The  animal's 
ignorance  is  at  least  free  from  the  curse  of  supersti- 
tion ;  his  happiness  is  not  marred  by  the  multitude  of 
misleading  ideas  which  pervert  man.  The  animal's  sel- 
fishness is  at  least  free  from  the  perversions  of  vanity, 
and  from  the  vices  with  which  aberrant  imagination 
has  degraded  the  passions  of  men.  Human  history 
on  its  darker  side  is  a  frightful  succession  of  cruelties 
and  debaucheries,  such  as  find  no  parallel  in  the 
history  of  animals.  It  is  true  that  animals  have 
no  virtues ;  for  Virtue  is  the  suppression  of  our 
egoistic  impulses  to  promote  the  welfare  of  others ; 
and  animals  are  incapable  of  this  conception.  Their 
instincts  lead  directly  to  actions,  never  to  ideas. 
Hence,  while  they  share  with  man  the  sexual  instinct, 
they  know  nothing  of  Love.  On  the  other  hand, 
while  animals  suff"er  the  contagion  of  Disease  and  the 
contagion  of  Fear,  man  alone  suffers  the  contagion  of 
Folly ;  for  him  error  is  as  catching  as  a  disease.  Lest 
this  should  read  like  an  unworthy  sarcasm  on  human 
nature,  I  will  add  :  Man  alone  knows  the  contagion 
of  Enthusiasm,  of  Glory,  of  Virtue.  If  the  animal  is 
less  miserable  because  untormented  by  the  unresting 
search  for  happiness  and  ideal  life,  and  unterrified  by 
superstitions,  he  is  also  less  enviable,  because  un- 
touched by  spiritual  desires — 

"  For  who  -would  lose, 
Thougli  full  of  pain,  this  intellectual  being, 
These  thoughts  which  wander  through  eternity?" 

106.  The  objection  may  perhaps  be  urged  that  in 
the   foregoing   remarks   man   is   represented   in   his 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  139 

developed  state,  after  centuries  of  culture  have  modi- 
fied his  organism,  not  in  the  primitive  nor  even  in 
the  savage  state,  and  in  so  far  the  comparison  with 
the  animal  is  unjust.  But  my  object  was  to  make 
prominent  the  effect  of  the  social  factor,  and  to  take 
man  in  his  developed  state  as  the  peculiar  exemplar 
of  its  power.  The  distinguishing  character  of  Human 
Psychology  is,  that  to  the  three  great  factors  Organ- 
ism, External  Medium,  and  Heredity,  which  it  has  in 
common  with  Animal  Psychology,  it  adds  a  fourth, 
namely,  relation  to  a  Social  Medium,  with  its  product, 
the  General  Mind  (see  next  chapter).  Even  in  con- 
fining our  comparative  survey  to  the  human  race,  we 
see  evidence  enough  how  supremely  important  is  this 
social  medium.  The  confio-uration  of  the  savasre  and 
all  his  functions  are  indistinguishable  from  those  of 
the  civilised  man.  The  marked  diversities  between 
the  mental  phenomena  of  the  two  result  from  the 
more  complex  social  relations  and  the  consequent 
enlargement  of  Experience.  Note,  further,  that  the 
historical  evidence  of  the  evolution  of  sentiments  and 
faculties  disproves  both  the  metaphysical  doctrine  of 
innate  sentiments  and  ideas,  and  the  phrenological 
doctrine  of  sentiments  and  faculties  having  their 
organs  in  cerebral  configurations. 

107.  Although  it  is  to  Experience  that  Knowledge 
must  be  referred,  the  Experience  which  has  within  it 
the  means  of  continuous  evolution  owes  this  to  Lan- 
guage, a  faculty  no  brute  has  acquired.  By  it  ex- 
periences are  registered,  generalised,  compared,  and 
condensed  in  formulas  which  serve  for  intellectual 
money.  By  it  the  personal  relations  are  raised  into 
impersonal  conceptions  :  the  moral  life  becomes  the 


140       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

social  life.  The  canimal,  as  I  formerly  said,  lias 
sympathy  and  is  moved  by  sympathetic  impulses, 
but  these  are  never  altruistic  ;  the  ends  consciously 
sought  are  never  remote  ends.  Our  moral  life  is  feel- 
ing for  others,  working  for  others,  quite  irrespective 
of  any  personal  good  beyond  the  satisfaction  of  this 
social  impulse.  Enlightened  by  the  intuition  of  our 
common  weakness,  we  share  ideally  the  universal 
sorrows.  Enjoyment,  more  and  more  expanded  with 
the  possibilities  of  interchange,  becomes  another  name 
for  communion. 

108.  By  gaining  some  insight  into  the  operation 
of  the  social  factor  through  the  instrumentality  of 
Language  we  are  enabled  to  state  approximately  what 
mental  phenomena  can  not  be  found  in  animals.  But, 
owing  to  the  interfusion  of  this  with  the  other  factors, 
and  the  modifications  of  Feelings  which  result,  the 
mere  abstracting  of  the  social  medium  does  not  leave 
us  standing  face  to  face  with  the  animal  Feeling.  If 
it  enables  us  to  affirm  what  feelings  the  animals  cannot 
have,  it  does  not  enable  us  to  understand  how  far 
those  which  they  have  resemble  our  own  ;  and  this 
inability  is  very  sensible  in  the  case  of  emotions  of 
the  complex  order.  "  All  animals  feel  wonder,'^  says 
Mr.  Darwin,  "  and  many  exhibit  curiosity. ''  How  far 
the  feelings  so  named  are  like  our  own  is  not  clear. 
We  observe  the  attention  of  animals  fixed  on  certain 
events,  and  we  observe  them  agitated  by  certain 
impressions.  Brehm  and  Mr.  Darwin  record  how 
"  monkeys,  moved  by  their  dread  of  snakes,  could  not 
resist  lifting  up  the  lid  of  the  box  in  which  the  snakes 
were,  and  peeping  at  their  enemies."  This  is  so  like 
the   action   of  children,    and  monkeys   have   organ- 


1 


THE   STUDY  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  141 

isms  so  like  tliose  of  children,  that  we  must  infer 
a  certain  community  in  their  mental  states.  Again, 
that  animals  reason  —  that  is  to  say,  combine  expe- 
riences, form  judgments,  inferences — is  now  seldom 
disputed  by  competent  observers.  "It  is  a  significant 
fact  that  the  more  the  habits  of  any  particular  animal 
are  studied  by  a  naturalist,  the  more  he  attributes  to 
reason  and  the  less  to  unlearnt  instincts."  Eeugger 
gives  two  good  illustrations  :  When  first  he  offered 
his  monkeys  eggs,  they  smashed  them,  and  thus  lost 
much  of  the  contents ;  afterwards,  they  gently  hit 
one  end  against  some  hard  body,  and  picked  off  the 
bits  of  shell  with  their  fingers.  Lumps  of  sugar 
were  often  given  them  wrapped  up  in  paper ;  and  he 
sometimes  put  a  live  wasp  in  the  paper,  so  that  hastily 
unfolding  it,  they  got  stung  ;  after  this  had  once  hap- 
pened, they  always  first  held  the  packet  to  their  ears 
to  detect  any  movement  within.  In  these  examples 
there  is  the  manifest  result  of  experience  ;  but  many 
of  the  lower  animals — say,  reptiles  and  fishes — would 
continue  all  their  lives  unmodified  by  such  loss  of 
food  and  such  pain  in  its  acquisition.  I  have  seen  a 
monkey  to  whom  a  nut  was  given,  failing  to  crack  it 
with  his  teeth,  return  it  to  the  giver.  If  this  was  not 
reasoning,  one  knows  not  what  deserves  the  name. 
Yet,  although  the  logical  process  in  this  case  is  iden- 
tical with  the  logical  process  manifest  in  the  highest 
reaches  of  reason,  it  is  distinguishable  as  the  Logic  of 
Feeling,  not  the  Logic  of  Signs.  In  comparing  the 
possibilities  of  the  ape  with  those  of  mankind,  we 
must  remember  that  in  the  idea  "ape  "  are  to  be  in- 
cluded all  the  circumstances  of  ape-life,  under  which 
we  may  be  as  calmly  assured  as  Sydney  Smith  said 


142        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

he  was,  tliat  tlie  blue-faced  baboon  will  never  become 
our  rival  in  Philosopby,  Science,  and  the  Arts.  The 
vision  of  man's  achievement,  say,  in  the  explora- 
tion and  theory  of  the  heavens,  in  the  conception  of 
chemical  proportions,  in  the  interpretation  of  ancient 
records  and  strict  calculation  of  remote  phenomena, 
and  in  the  wondrous  ideal  web  of  religion  and  poetry 
that  has  wrought  into  one  grand  emotional  force  the 
ages  past,  present,  and  to  come — all  this,  side  by  side 
with  the  image  of  the  highest  baboon-life,  presents 
an  incongruity  preposterous  enough  to  justify  the 
scorn  with  which  comprehensive  minds  have  turned 
away  from  the  hypothesis  which  seeks  for  an  explana- 
tion of  human  Intellect  in  the  functions  of  the  or- 
ganism common  to  man  and  animals,  without  the 
addition  of  some  other  agency. 

109.  It  is  this  other  agency  which  the  psychologist 
has  to  detect.  Mr.  Darwin,  resuming  his  remarks, 
says :  "It  has,  I  think,  now  been  shown  that  man 
and  the  higher  animals  have  some  few  instincts  in 
common.  All  have  the  same  senses,  intuitions,  and 
sensations  " — (for  same  read  similar) — "  similar  pas- 
sions, affections,  emotions,  even  the  more  complex 
ones  :  they  feel  wonder  and  curiosity ;  they  possess 
the  same  faculties  of  imitation,  attention,  memory, 
imagination,  and  reason,  though  in  very  different 
degrees.  Nevertheless,  many  authors  have  insisted 
that  man  is  separated  through  his  mental  faculties 
by  an  impassable  barrier  from  all  the  lower  animals  " 
(p.  48). 

With  these  authors  I  agree.  I  hold,  indeed,  that 
the  mental  /acuities  of  man  are  developed  out  of 
Tuental  functions  which  animals  share  with  man  ;  but 


THE   STUDY   OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  143 

these  faculties,  when  developed,  constitute  as  broad  a 
line  of  demarcation,  a  barrier  as  impassable,  as  that 
between  the  vertebrate  and  invertebrate  structure. 
The  moral  and  higher  intellectual  faculties  of  man  can 
no  more  be  explained  by  reference  to  the  animal  func- 
tions alone  than  the  flight  of  birds  can  be  explained 
by  the  creeping  of  reptiles,  though  both  are  reducible 
to  mechanical  and  physiological  principles.  Just  as 
birds  have  wings,  man  has  Language.  The  wings 
give  the  bird  its  peculiar  aptitude  for  aerial  locomo- 
tion. Language  enables  man's  intelligence  and  pas- 
sions to  acquire  their  peculiar  characters  of  Intellect 
and  Sentiment.  And  Language  is  a  social  product 
of  a  quite  peculiar  kind.  It  does  not  depend  on  the 
structure  of  the  vocal  organs  alone,  for  some  birds 
can  articulate  and  imitate  even  our  words  ;  but  no 
bird  uses  such  articulations  as  expressions  of  ideas. 
It  does  not  depend  on  the  existence  of  a  society, 
for  bees  and  ants  live  in  societies ;  and  many  animals 
live  together  in  groups.  In  the  so-called  animal 
societies,  there  is  apparently  nothing  beyond  an 
afifgregation  of  individuals,  with  some  division  of 
employments  ;  there  is  no  subordination  nor  co-ordina- 
tio!i — only  co-operation ;  no  powers  invested  in  indi- 
viduals and  classes  ;  no  command  and  obedience  ;  no 
relinquishment  of  personal  claims ;  above  all,  they 
have  developed  nothing  like  the  Family  as  the  social 
unit,  and  Tradition  as  the  social  experience.  "  The 
mental  powers  in  some  early  progenitor  of  man  must," 
Mr.  Darwin  remarks,  "  have  been  more  highly  de- 
veloped than  in  any  existing  ape,  before  even  the 
most  imperfect  form  of  speech  could  have  come  into 
use ;  but  we  may  confidently  believe  that  the  con- 


144  PEOBLEMS    OP  LIFE   AND    MIND. 

tinued  use  and  advancement  of  this  power  would 
have  reacted  on  the  mind  by  enabling  it  and  encour- 
aging it  to  carry  on  long  trains  of  thought."  Yet 
why  should  the  ape  desire  to  carry  on  long  trains  of 
thouglit  ?  Here  lies  the  problem.  As  a  matter  of 
organisation,  the  man  happens  to  have  a  development 
of  the  articulating  faculty  which  is  denied  to  the  ape, 
who  has  less  than  the  magpie  or  parrot,  though  he  is 
more  intelligent.  And  as  a  matter  of  function  merely, 
the  articulation  of  the  savage  is  equal  to  that  of  the 
philosopher;  yet  the  savage  has  by  no  means  so  great 
an  intellectual  and  moral  superiority  over  the  ape  as 
the  highly  cultured  modern  has  over  the  savage.  It 
is  in  the  action  and  reaction  of  the  social  medium  on 
the  organism  that  we  must  seek  the  causes  of  this 
superiority. 

THE  MORAL  SENSE. 

110.  AAHiat  is  conspicuous  in  the  case  of  Intellect 
may  also  be  discerned  in  Conscience.  Both  are  social 
products.  The  hereditary  transmission  of  organised 
tendencies,  together  with  the  distinction  between 
functions  and  faculties,  enables  us  to  reconcile  the 
h  priori  intuitional  with  the  experiential  theory. 
If  we  admit  the  intelligence  of  animals  to  be  a  rudi- 
mentary intellect,  we  may  admit  the  emotions  of 
animals  to  be  a  rudimentary  moral  sense.  In 
the  self-repressing  effort  induced  by  the  sexual  and 
parental  instincts  in  birds  and  intelligent  mammals,' 
and  in  their  capability  of  attachment  apart  from  the 
direct  physical  link,  we  may  recognise  the  same  germs 
as  those  which  in  man  the  social  life  has  developed 


THE  STUDY  OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  145 

into  devoted  aflfection,  passionate  sympathy,  and  self- 
denying  forethought. 

111.  We  train  our  domestic  animals,  as  we  train 
our  children,  to  do  this  and  avoid  that,  by  expressions 
of  approbation  and  disapprobation,  which  represent 
caresses  and  blows ;  and  so  far  we  find  them  im- 
pressible and  educable  by  the  moral  instrumentality 
which,  in  its  gradual  action  on  men,  has  incorporated 
itself  as  custom,  law,  and  public  opinion.  But  if  we 
take  the  term  Moral  Sense  to  mean  the  power  of  dis- 
cerning right  and  wrong,  this  is  as  impossible  to  an 
animal  as  the  power  of  discerning  arithmetical  pro- 
portions, though  here,  too,  the  animal  may  show  a 
rudimentary  power  in  the  regulation  of  its  action  by 
feelings  of  difference,  "as  if"  it  counted.  Even  in 
man  this  moral  sense  cannot  properly  be  said  to  be 
connate  otherwise  than  as  a  musical  sense  is  connate  : 
it  no  more  brings  with  it  conceptions  of  what  is  right, 
ivha.t  wrong,  than  the  musical  aptitude  brings  with  it 
a  symphony  of  Beethoven.  What  it  carries  are  cer- 
tain organised  predispositions  that  spontaneously  or 
docilely  issue  in  the  beneficent  forms  of  action  which 
the  experience  of  society  has  classed  as  right.  But 
in  the  less  endowed  specimens  of  our  race,  even  within 
the  reach  of  culture,  the  response  to  the  moral  de- 
mands of  society,  whether  in  the  shape  of  doctrine  or 
of  institutions,  is  little  more  than  the  conflict  of  op- 
posing appetites,  the  check  imposed  by  egoistic  dread- 
on  egoistic  desire.  It  is  a  great  progress  beyond  this 
brute  dread  of  the  stick  when  the  love  of  approbation 
attains  the  ideal  force  which  renders  social  rule  or 
custom  and  the  respect  of  fellow-men  an  habitually 
felt  restraint  and  guidance.     Even  within  this  limit 

VOL.  in.  K 


146       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

we  see  the  human  sentience  attaining  a  mark  utterly 
beyond  the  reach  of  our  most  intelligent  inarticulate 
companion,  the  dog.  But  the  moral  dispositions  of 
men  have  manifold  roots,  and  a  great  deal  of  "  right" 
action  is  sure  to  be  done  by  very  simple  beings  from 
healthy  imjxilse,  under  the  guidance  of  fact,  without 
the  idea  of  an  uplifted  rod  ;  just  as  all  over  the  world 
men  have  fed  themselves  on  life-sustaining  aliment 
and  not  on  poison,  and  have  devised  suitable  imple- 
ments of  labour.  And  it  is  to  this  primitive  feeling 
and  gradual  varied  discernment  of  what  is  congruous 
with  well-being,  what  in  the  ancient  phrase  is  "  ac- 
cording to  nature,"  that  we  must  refer  the  beginning 
of  those  social  rules  to  which  approbation  and  disap- 
probation, law  and  its  sanctions,  are  limbs  or  appen- 
dices. It  is  true  that,  from  the  first,  superstition 
mingles  its  monstrous  misguidance  with  the  trust- 
worthy teachings  of  perception  and  practice,  and  the 
growing  mental  and  active  range  gives  room  not  only 
for  the  expansion  of  real  and  ideal  good,  but  also  for 
the  perversions  of  vanity,  the  love  of  domination,  and 
all  forms  of  selfish  greed ;  so  that  the  social  rule  or 
public  opinion  of  every  age,  and  even  in  the  most 
civilised  communities,  has  given  its  potent  smile  and 
frown  to  orders  of  action  so  mixed  that  what  some- 
where or  at  some  time  has  been  enforced  as  "  right," 
lias  elsewhere  or  at  another  time  been  held  abhorrent. 
And  this  observation  leads  us  to  the  striking  anti- 
thesis presented  in  the  progress  of  mankind  ;  namely, 
that  the  Moral  Sense,  which,  in  the  first  instance,  was 
moulded  under  the  influence  of  an  external  approba- 
tion and  disapprobation,  comes  at  last,  in  the  select 
members  of  a  given  generation,  to  incorporate  itself  as 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  147 

protest  and  resistance,  as  the  renunciation  of  imme- 
diate sympathy  for  the  sake  of  a  foreseen  general 
good,  as  moral  defiance  of  material  force,  and  every 
form  of  martyrdom. 

111*.  It  is  at  this  point  that  we  may  fitly  look 
backward  and  see  liow  short  a  way  the  consideration 
of  animal  life  alone  will  take  us  in  the  appreciation  of 
the  moral  life  of  mankind,  which  is  wrought  out  of 
innumerable  closely  interwoven  threads  of  feeling  and 
knowing.  Nevertheless,  such  reduction  of  the  sym- 
pathetic or  moral  life  to  its  primary  manifestations  is 
not  merely  useful,  it  is  indispensable  to  a  true  analy- 
sis and  natural  history  of  morals.  Without  it  a  wise 
estimate  of  the  parts  played  by  impulse,  cognition, 
and  habit,  in  determining  human  conduct,  is  hardly 
possible.  In  the  pointer  dog  we  observe  the  efiiect  of 
trained  impulse  ;  a  native  tendency  restrained  and 
fashioned  to  a  specific  variety  of  action  by  external 
influence  or  the  presentation  of  motive.  The  same 
order  of  elements  developed  under  human  conditions 
issues  in  a  Regulative  Intuition — a  Moral  Sense  which 
is  a  discrimination  of  right  conduct  associated  with  a 
more  or  less  direct  disj^osition  to  accordant  practice. 
The  proportions  in  which  conscious  judgment  and 
immediate  impulse  are  thus  combined  vary  so  widely 
in  the  long  result  of  inheritance  and  training  that  we 
have,  on  the  one  side,  an  immediate  outleap  of  heroic 
generosity  or  self- condemnatory  justice  as  a  sort  of 
moral  reflex,  and  on  the  other  a  dire  struggle  between 
discerned  duty,  or  the  altruistic  estimate  of  conse- 
quences, and  the  strong  promptings  of  egoistic  desire. 
It  is  only  by  duly  estimating  this  necessary  co-opera- 
tion of  the  impulsive  and  the  perceptive,  the  emotional 


148  PROBLEMS   OF  LIFE  AND   MIND. 

and  tlie  intellectual  in  the  develoj^ment  of  morality, 
that  we  can  understand  the  aberrations  of  human 
teaching  and  practice,  or  the  reactions  of  beneficent 
sympathy  which  in  the  history  of  communities  are 
seen  to  defy  and  correct  them. 

112.  The  abstractions  Eight  and  Wrong  become,  in 
the  course  of  social  education,  a  centre  round  which 
emotions  immediately  group  themselves,  as  quickly 
as  steel  filings  round  a  magnet :  they  are  the  signal 
for  an  attitude  of  preparation  without  any  conception 
of  specific  acts  to  which  they  summon.  And,  again, 
in  a  lower  order  of  minds,  they  never  acquire  any 
efficient  significance  other  than  "  what  is  approved 
and  what  disapproved,"  "  what  is  punished  and  what 
rewarded."  Hence  we  see  the  members  even  of 
civilised  communities  determined  by  what  is  called 
religious  or  moral  teaching  as  variously  as  the  habits 
of  difierent  orders  of  animals  are  determined.  "  If," 
says  Mr.  Darwin,  "  to  take  an  extreme  case,  men  were 
reared  under  precisely  the  same  conditions  as  hive- 
bees,  there  could  hardly  be  a  doubt  that  our  unmarried 
females  would,  like  the  worker-bees,  think  it  a  sacred 
duty  to  kill  their  brothers,  and  mothers  would  strive 
to  kill  their  fertile  daughters,  and  no  one  would  think 
of  interfering"  (p.  73).  To  make  the  comparison 
luminous,  we  must  shade  our  eyes  from  the  impossi- 
bility of  human  organisms  being  subjected  to  precisely 
the  same  conditions  as  hive-bees.  And  we  need  not 
look  beyond  the  human  sphere  to  see  the  preposterous 
and  maleficent  courses  which  may  be  taught  and 
practised  under  the  form  of  Eight,  either  as  an  ex- 
pression of  Divine  Will,  or  as  a  means  of  securing 
some  ultimate  deliverance  from  evil.     But  dominating 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  149 

all  other  influences  lias  been  the  Social  Sanction, 
the  approbation  or  disapprobation  through  which  the 
opinion  of  society  penetrates  the  life  of  its  members, 
from  the  hearth  to  the  court  of  justice,  from  the  game 
of  chance  with  which  they  amuse  their  idleness  to 
the  field  of  battle  where  they  face  death.  A  glance 
at  any  social  state  will  show  the  triumph  of  this  force 
when  it  comes  into  collision  even  with  consecrated 
beliefs,  spiritual  terrors,  and  care  for  the  loving  and 
beloved.  Take  the  case  of  duelling.  A  man  might 
see  clearly  enough  that  the  practice  was,  in  point  of 
utility,  absurd,  was  attended  with  cruel  consequences, 
and  was  a  direct  violation  of  his  religious  principles ; 
but  the  immediate  terror  of  social  contempt  for  what 
was  branded  as  cowardice  overpowered  the  fear  of 
death  and  of  the  Divine  wrath,  the  pleadings  of  the 
family  and  the  thunders  of  the  Church.  The  one 
power  that  has  succeeded  in  suppressing  it  is  the 
reversal  of  the  social  disapprobation.  "  If  the  force 
of  custom  simple  and  separate  be  great,"  says  Bacon, 
"the  force  of  custom  copulate,  and  conjoined,  and 
collegiate  is  far  greater ;  for  then  example  teacheth, 
company  comforteth,  emulation  quickeneth,  glory 
raiseth." 

Here  we  see  the  differences  that  may  be  covered 
by  an  identity  of  names,  though  the  identity  may 
be  significant  of  a  true  kindred.  We  may  say  that 
we  educate  our  dogs  in  a  medium  of  approbation  and 
disapprobation,  and  we  may  give  the  same  name  to 
that  blending  of  coercion  and  sympathy  which  has 
educated  man  to  produce  poems  that  thrill  the  life  of 
successive  ages,  and  science  that  embraces  more  and 


150       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

more  of  the  invisible  and  brings  it  within  the  range 
of  demonstration. 

The  progressive  changes  underlying  the  term 
"  moral "  may  be  illustrated  by  the  conception  of 
Remorse.  A  dog  running  away  and  hiding  himself 
after  a  conscious  misdemeanour,  and  not  to  be  brought 
back  by  coaxing,  having  more  fear  of  the  stick  than 
belief  in  forgiveness,  is  not  a  very  inadequate  com- 
parison for  that  stage  of  human  remorse  which  con- 
sists in  the  misdoer's  mere  terror  of  the  vengeance 
he  has  incurred  from  supernal  powers.  To  the  moral 
sense  in  this  lower  stage  there  is  but  a  faint  and 
confused  impression  of  what  constitutes  the  wrong  of 
wrongdoing ;  forgiveness  is  contemplated  as  a  heal- 
all.  But  in  a  mind  where  the  educated  tracing  of 
hurtful  consequences  to  others  is  associated  with  a 
sympathetic  imagination  of  their  sujffering,  Remorse 
has  no  relation  to  an  external  source  of  punishment 
for  the  wrong  committed :  it  is  the  agonised  sense, 
the  contrite  contemplation,  of  the  wound  inflicted  on 
another.  Wordsworth  has  depicted  a  remorse  of  this 
kind — 

"  Feebly  must  they  have  felt 
Who,  in  old  time,  attired  with  snakes  and  whips 
The  vengeful  Furies.     Beautiful  regards 
Were  turned  on  me — the  face  of  her  I  loved  j 
The  wife  and  mother,  pitifully  fixing 
Tender  reproaches,  insupportable  !  " 

The  sanction  which  was  once  the  outside  whip  has 
become  the  inward  sympathetic  pang. 

113.  But  in  the  intermediate  stages  also,  which 
are  more  comparable  to  the  manifestations  of  animals, 
at  the  same  time  that  the  dread  is  directed  to  an 


THE   STUDY   OP   PSYCHOLOGY.  151 

external  vengeance  of  gods  or  men,  we  see  the  moral 
education  of  our  race  proceeding,  in  the  more  and 
more  rational  classification  of  actions  as  right  or 
wrong,  towards  the  final  identification  of  the  Divine 
Will  with  the  highest  ascertainable  duty  to  mankind, 
and  in  the  continual  elevation  of  public  opinion 
towards  the  highest  mark  of  Feeling  informed  by 
Knowledge. 

The  diff'erent  strands  of  human  experience  which 
combine  to  create  moral  sentiment  act  in  various 
proportion  on  individual  minds,  and  hence  it  happens 
that  some  formulas  of  ideal  motive  which  have  an 
intense  reality  for  one  mind  have  little  force  for 
another,  though  the  moral  level  may  be  in  both 
cases  equally  high.  Kant's  fine  phrase — "Man  re- 
fuses to  violate  in  his  own  person  the  dignity  of 
humanity " — may  represent  an  abiding  efficient  re- 
sponse in  the  consciousness  of  a  given  person,  the 
moral  keynote,  as  we  may  say,  to  which  his  other 
sentiments  are  adjusted.  His  discernment  and  choice 
of  the  Right  are  braced  by  an  intense  scorn  of  the 
Wrong,  which  he  habitually  represents  to  himself 
in  its  wider  relations. 

114.  Thus  while  man,  in  his  moral  beginnings,  has 
a  marked  kinship  with  the  animals,  whose  life,  like 
his  ow^n,  is  regulated  by  desires  and  intelligence,  he 
stands  apart  in  the  attainment  of  moral  conceptions 
and  of  organised  ethical  tendencies,  which  are  correctly 
callod  moral  intuitions.  These  latter  form  a  justi- 
fication for  the  a  'priori  intuitional  doctrine ;  but  its 
explanation  lies  in  the  principles  of  experience.  We 
have  intuitions  of  Right  and  Wrong  in  so  far  as  we 
have  intuitions  of  certain  consequences ;  but  these 


152       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

must  have  been  learned  in  our  own  experience  or 
transmitted  from  the  experience  of  others.  Some 
writers  who  are  disposed  to  exaggerate  the  action  of 
Heredity  believe  that  certain  specific  experiences  of 
social  utility  in  the  race  become  organised  in  descen- 
dants, and  are  thus  transmitted  as  instincts.  With 
the  demonstrated  wonders  of  heredity  before  us,  it  is 
rash  to  fix  limits  to  the  specific  determinations  it 
may  include ;  but  the  evidence  in  this  direction  is 
obscured  by  the  indubitable  transmission  through 
language  and  other  social  institutions. 

HISTORY. 

114*.  We  need  not  prolong  this  survey  of  the 
difi'erences  between  Animal  and  Human  Psychology  : 
its  outcome  is,  that  although  the  observation  of  ani- 
mals may  yield  us  valuable  material,  it  must  be  used 
with  great  circumspection,  and  only  as  suggestion  for 
experimental  analysis,  never  as  premisses  for  conclu- 
sions reaching  beyond.  The  objective  data  of  Psycho- 
logy are  furnished  by  Zoology  and  History ;  the  laws 
by  Physiology  and  Sociology.  Observation  will  not 
suffice.  Introspection  will  not  suffice.  Analysis  and 
Verification  by  Synthesis  are  necessary.  Experiment  is 
necessary.  Disease  has  been  happily  termed  an  "  Ex- 
periment instituted  by  Nature,"  since  the  disturbance 
of  one  organ  by  exaggerating  or  diminishing  its  action 
renders  more  conspicuous  the  part  that  organ  plays 
in  the  general  activity.  We  may  also  term  History 
an  experiment  instituted  by  Society,  since  it  presents 
conspicuous  variations  of  mental  reactions  under 
varying  social  conditions,  and  exhibits   on  a   large 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  153 

scale  the  evoliitiou  of  sentience  and  conceptions  from 
germs  of  emotional  and  intellectual  experiences. 
History  unrolls  the  palimpsest  of  mental  evolution. 
Under  the  conspicuous  characters  of  Science  and  Con- 
science may  be  read  the  fainter  characters  of  more 
primitive  states ;  under  Sentiments,  the  primitive 
Affections  ;  under  Morality,  the  social  needs  transform- 
ing primitive  personal  desires  into  impersonal  aims,  so 
that  the  stranger  is  no  longer  an  enemy  {hostis),  but 
a  fellow-worker  and  fellow-sufferer.  History  shows 
how  individual  experiences  become  general  possessions, 
and  individual  labours  become  wealth  ;  how  facts  be- 
come Science,  and  industries  Commerce.  The  shift- 
ing panorama  of  History  presents  a  continuous 
evolution,  a  fuller  and  more  luminous  tradition,  an 
iutenser  consciousness  of  a  wider  life. 

115.  Because  Psychology  is  interpreted  through 
Sociology,  and  Experience  acquires  its  development 
mainly  through  social  influences,  we  must  always 
take  History  into  account.  It  shares  with  Society 
the  distinctive  character  of  progress.  It  is  for  ever 
germinating,  for  ever  evolving.  The  physiologist  re- 
cognises the  same  organs  and  functions  in  the  savage 
and  the  civilized,  in  Greek,  Hindoo,  old  German, 
or  modern  European  ;  but  not  the  same  thoughts  and 
sentiments.  The  brain  of  a  cultivated  Englishman 
of  our  day,  compared  with  the  brain  of  a  Greek  of 
the  age  of  Pericles,  would  not  present  any  appreciable 
diflferences,  yet  the  differences  between  the  moral  and 
intellectual  activities  of  the  two  would  be  many  and 
vast.  These  are  not  to  be  assigned  to  the  organism 
and  its  functions.  The  co-ordination  of  sensory  pro- 
cesses in  the  brain  of  the   Greek  was  doubtless  as 


154        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

perfect  as  that  in  the  brain  of  the  Englishman ;  but 
the  quahty  of  the  moral  feelings  and  the  range  of 
conceptions,  so  far  as  we  could  test  them  objectively, 
would  be  very  different.  The  Englishman  has  been 
nourished  on  the  products  of  the  centuries  ;  his  feel- 
ings and  thoughts  have  taken  form  under  conditions 
unknown  to  the  Greek,  so  that  what  would  have 
delighted  the  one  is  anguish  to  the  other.  The  sight 
of  a  w^ounded  foreigner,  which  agitates  the  English- 
man, and  prompts  him  by  its  very  imagination  to 
undertake  hardships  and  danger  in  the  effort  to  relieve 
the  sufferer,  would  have  excited  no  more  emotion  in  a 
Greek  than  the  sight  of  an  injured  dog.  A  proposi- 
tion to  send  money,  food,  clothing,  and  medical  aid 
to  the  relief  of  the  wounded  Cretans  would  have 
made  the  Agora  ring  with  shouts  of  derisive  laughter. 
And  a  treatise  on  algebra  which  is  mastered  by  a 
schoolboy  would  have  been  like  a  wizard's  scroll  to 
Pythagoras  or  Hipparchus.  Aristotle,  with  all  his 
knowledge  and  aptitudes,  would  be  as  a  child  in 
Liebig's  laboratory.  So  great  has  been  the  evolu- 
tion of  moral  sentiments  and  scientific  conceptions. 

Thus,  while  the  laws  of  the  sentient  functions  must 
be  studied  in  Physiology,  the  laws  of  the  sentient 
faculties,  especially  the  moral  and  intellectual  facul- 
ties, must  be  studied  in  History.  The  true  logic  of 
Science  is  only  made  apparent  in  the  history  of 
Science.  If  we  follow  the  development  of  thought 
on  the  large  scale  of  Plistory,  we  see  how  the  mind 
acquires  new  powers  and  possibilities  with  new  con- 
ceptions. We  see  also  how  it  passes  from  particular 
concrete  facts  to  general  facts  and  abstractions  ;  we 
see  it  dcscendino:  from  the  heip^hts  of  abstraction  to 


THE   STUDY   OP   PSYCHOLOGY.  155 

the  discovery  of  particulars.  In  otlier  words,  we  ob- 
serve a  natural  mode  of  mental  operation,  to  which  we 
affix  the  term  Induction,  and  another  mode  to  which 
we  affix  the  term  Deduction.  These  formulated,  we 
have  entered  on  the  eternal  possession  of  two  logical 
laws.  Had  we  not  the  historical  evidence  assuring 
us  that  these  laws  were  unsuspected  for  thousands 
of  years,  although,  of  course,  in  operation  from  the 
earliest  ages,  we  should  imagine  them  to  have  been 
familiar  to  every  reflecting  mind.  And  so  with  other 
mental  laws.  History  discloses  how  the  mind  passes 
from  wonderment  at  the  miraculous  to  the  discern- 
ment of  order,  from  sorcery  to  science  (a  passage 
formulated  by  Comte  as  the  law  of  the  three  stages), 
how  the  mind  begins  with  a  vague  conception  of 
universal  Animism,  or  the  presence  of  a  separate  Will 
in  each  object,  with  consequent  belief  in  the  capri- 
ciousness  of  events,  leaving  the  imagination  free  to 
picture  the  past  and  the  future  in  any  combinations 
it  pleases  ;  how  this  belief  gradually  becomes  troubled 
by  doubts,  as  experience  presses  on  man  the  convic- 
tion that  events  are  causally  and  not  casually  deter- 
mined, till  at  length  the  law  of  Causality  is  conceived, 
and  the  order  of  events  is  recognised  as  inexorable. 
Henceforth  familiarity  with  exact  descriptions  and 
demonstrations  creates  a  habit  of  mind  which  renders 
miracles  inconceivable,  and  caprice  in  the  succession 
of  events  absurd.  All  our  experiences  and  all  our 
explanations  are  now  dominated  by  a  steady  faith  in 
a  fixed  order,  and  our  efforts  are  directed  towards  the 
ascertainment  of  what  that  order  is.  To  the  mind  thus 
organised,  the  fluctuating  belief  in  accident  and  caprice, 
which  our  ancestors  held,  is  as  the  babble  of  infants. 


156       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

Not  only  in  Science  is  the  marcli  of  mind  thus 
conspicuously  illustrated  :  a  similar  evolution  may  be 
traced  in  Art.  New  sensibilities  are  developed,  and 
Nature  is  full  of  new  symbols.  There  are  harmonies, 
both  rhythmic  and  moral,  in  the  poetry  of  Goethe 
and  Wordsworth  w^hich  would  have  been  discords 
and  dark  riddles  to  Sophocles  or  to  Dante.  A  fugue 
by  Bach,  or  a  symphony  by  Beethoven,  would  have 
been  little  better  than  a  noisy  chaos  to  Pericles.  In 
the  developments  of  Industry  and  the  Mechanical 
Arts,  the  mind  has  acquired  not  only  new  powers,  but 
the  equivalents  of  new  senses. 

If  it  is  evident  that  the  individual  mind  has  been 
in  constant  evolution,  still  more  evident  is  the  fact 
that  the  general  mind,  or  what  we  call  the  "  culture 
of  the  age,"  is  an  historical  growth.  "  Before  our 
eyes  a  world  of  reason  is  slowly  constituting  itself 
in  the  history  of  culture  ;  and  we  who  live  now  enter 
upon  the  inheritance  which  past  ages  have  laid  up 
for  us.  There  is,  however,  a  fundamental  difference 
between  the  way  in  which  these  results  look  to  us 
now  and  the  way  in  which  they  originally  organised 
themselves.  The  child  who  begins  to  learn  a  language 
finds  the  members  of  it  all,  as  it  were,  upon  one  level : 
adjectives,  adverbs,  prepositions,  and  verbs  confront 
him  with  the  same  authority  and  rank.  This  appear- 
ance is  deceptive  ;  it  may  easily  suggest  that  the 
words  are  not  members  in  an  organism  in  and  out  of 
which  they  have  developed.  We  can  go  back  to  a 
point  when  there  was  little  or  no  distinction  between 
elements  ;  when  language  was  narrower  in  its  range, 
and  not,  as  now,  developed,  into  an  endless  host  of 


THE   STUDY   OP   PSYCHOLOGY.  157 

points.     The  same  allusion  lias  to  be  overcome  in  the 
case  of  thought."  ^^ 

116.  Thus  the  psychologist  must  include  Psy- 
chogeny  in  his  investigations,  as  the  physiologist  in- 
cludes Embryogeny.  History  shows  how  the  human 
mind,  which,  at  the  dawn  of  civilisation,  was  a  lyre  of 
three  chords,  became  in  the  progress  of  civilisation  a 
lyre  of  seven  chords  ;  and  by  consequence  the  pre- 
tension of  the  Introspective  Method  is  inadmissible 
as  regards  the  genesis  of  mind.  But  we  need  not 
therefore  accept  Mr.  Green's  verdict  that  "  the  obser- 
vation by  the  mind  of  its  own  genesis  is  the  crown- 
ing absurdity  of  speculation ;  for  there  is  nothing  to 
observe  unless  the  observer  puts  his  own  developed 
consciousness  in  the  place  of  the  undeveloped  con- 
sciousness he  is  observing."  t  The  difficulty  here 
suggested  applies  only  to  the  Introspective  Method. 
Objective  analysis  will  enable  the  psychologist  to 
observe  the  evolutions  of  mind,  as  it  enables  the 
physiologist  to  observe  the  evolutions  of  the  embryo. 
The  one  carries  with  him  the  standard  of  a  developed 
consciousness,  to  which  all  the  observed  stages  tend, 
as  the  other  carries  with  him  the  standard  of  an  adult 
organism,  to  which  all  the  prior  stages  tend.  Objec- 
tive analysis  further  furnishes  us  with  an  answer  to  the 
difficulty  which  many  regard  as  insuperable,  namely, 
that  mind  cannot  be  explained  as  a  function  of  the 
material  organism,  because  "to  go  beyond  the  intelli- 
gence to  explain  the  intelligence  is  to  cut  away  the 
ground  on  which  we  ourselves  are  standing."    To  this 

*  Wallace  :  The  Logic  of  Hegel,  1874,  p.  Ixxxiv. 
+  Green  :  Introduction  to  Hume,  §  9,  as  cited  by  Caird,  op.  cit. 


158  PROBLEMS   OP   LIFE   AND  MIND. 

the  answer  is  :  that  the  mind  can  be  exphiined  as 
a  function  of  the  material  organism  is-  proved  by  the 
fact  that  it  is  so  exphiined ;  and  the  objection  urged 
against  such  explanation  would  equally  apply  to  all 
theories  of  cosmical  phenomena,  since  we  can  only 
know  these  through  subjective  states,  only  express 
them  in  terms  of  Feeling.  We  observe  Life  as  a 
function  of  the  organism,  varying  with  all  the  varia- 
tions of  the  organism  ;  and,  having  this  clear  concep- 
tion of  the  function,  we  are  at  ease  respecting  any  of 
its  unknown  quantities.  So  with  mind.  We  observe 
it  as  a  function,  and  we  observe  its  variations  under 
varying  social  conditions.  Having  thus  a  clear  con- 
ception of  the  organism  and  of  social  influences,  we 
have  all  the  requisite  data  for  an  explanation  of  its 
development,  in  the  only  sense  according  to  which 
explanation  is  accessible  to  us. 


CHAPTER  IX. 


THE    GENERAL    MIND. 


117.  The  remarks  which  closed  the  preceding  chapter 
prepare  the  consideration  of  a  factor,  which,  although 
always  implied  in  theoretic  discussion  of  psycholo- 
gical questions,  is  rarely  conceived  with  distinctness. 
I  allude  to  the  experience  of  the  race  in  its  influence 
on  the  experience  of  the  individual ;  that  is  to  say, 
the  direction  impressed  by  the  General  Mind  on  the 
feelings  and  opinions  of  particular  minds.  This  in- 
fluence is  implied  in  the  familiar  use  of  such  terms  as 
the  Mind,  Common  Sense,  Collective  Consciousness, 
Thouglit  {Das  DenJcen),  Reason,  Spirit  of  the  Age, 
&c.  Obviously  these  terms  indicate  something  over 
and  above  the  individual  mind,  transcending  its  limi- 
tations and  correcting  its  infirmities.  Obviously  also 
the  existence  of  such  a  factor  calls  upon  something 
beyond  Introspection,  since  we  cannot  pretend  by 
Introspection  to  a  direct  observation  of  phenomena 
which  lie  outside  our  individual  experience. 

The  object  of  search  is  the  human  mind,  not  a  mind. 
Psychology  has  to  explain  not  my  thought  nor  yours, 
not  my  modes  of  reaction  nor  yours,  except  in  so  far 
as  these  are  exemplifications  of  the  normal  reactions 
of  an  ideal  mind.  Science  formulates  general  laws 
and  abstract  conceptions ;    not  particular  facts   and 


160       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

idiosyncrasies.  From  the  fleeting  changes  of  the 
individual  it  extricates  a  group  of  characters  which 
these  changes  have  in  common  ;  from  the  multitu- 
dinous diversities  of  individual  organisms  it  extri- 
cates a  group  of  characters  common  to  all.  It  finds 
the  sentient  organism  reacting  differently  in  infancy, 
in  maturity,  and  in  old  age  ;  differently  from  year 
to  year,  day  to  day,  hour  to  hour.  But  amid  these 
changes  there  are  characters  which  do  not  change  ; 
and  the  total  of  these  is  condensed  in  the  abstract 
conception.  Mind. 

118.  The  combination  of  the  individual  and  the 
general  leads  to  this  result.  While  the  mental  func- 
tions are  functions  of  the  individual  organism,  the 
product,  Mind,  is  more  than  an  individual  product. 
Like  its  great  instrument.  Language,  it  is  at  once 
individual  and  social.  Each  man  speaks  in  virtue  of 
the  functions  of  vocal  expression,  but  also  in  virtue  of 
the  social  need  of  communication.  The  words  spoken 
are  not  his  creation,  yet  he,  too,  must  appropriate 
them  by  what  may  be  called  a  creative  process  before 
he  can  understand  them.  What  his  tribe  speaks  he 
repeats  ;  but  he  does  not  simply  echo  their  words,  he 
rethinks  them.  In  the  same  way  he  adopts  their 
experiences  when  he  assimilates  them  to  his  own.  He 
only  feels  their  emotions  when  his  soul  is  moved  like 
theirs  ;  he  cannot  think  their  thoughts  so  long  as  his 
experiences  refuse  to  be  condensed  in  their  symbols. 
But  because  he  has  a  similar  vocal  function,  and  a 
similar  verbal  store,  he  can  reproduce  and  understand 
their  novel  combinations  of  speech  ;  and  because  he 
has  similar  experiences  he  can  understand  their  novel 
combinations  of  thought,  adopting  both  into  his  own 


THE    STUDY    OF    PSYCHOLOGY.  161 

and  getting  liis  range  of  fellowship  enlarged.  Besides 
the  circle  of  sensations,  appetites,  and  volitions  directly- 
related  to  his  personal  needs,  each  man  has  a  wider 
circle  of  sentiments  and  ideas  connecting  his  personal 
needs  with  the  needs  of  his  fellow-men,  and  embracing 
past  and  future.  These  constitute  a  large  part  of  his 
system  of  tli  ought. 

119.  Language  belongs  essentially  to  the  community 
by  whom  and  for  whom  it  is  called  into  existence.  In 
like  manner  Thought  belongs  essentially  to  Humanity. 
As  every  spoken  word  presupposes  an  intelligent 
hearer,  so  every  conception  implies  an  impersonal 
Reason  representing  relations  that  are  essentially  im- 
personal. A  solitary  man  would  feel,  and  think,  and 
will  ;  but  he  would  no  more  fashion  his  feelings, 
thoughts,  and  volitions  into  conceptions  which  are 
the  formulas  of  his  knowledge  than  he  would  articu- 
late them  in  words. 

Further,  the  experiences  of  each  individual  come 
and  go ;  they  correct,  enlarge,  destroy  one  another, 
leaving  behind  them  a  certain  residual  store,  which, 
condensed  in  intuiti'ons  and  formulated  in  principles, 
direct  and  modify  all  future  experiences.  The  sum 
of  these  is  designated  as  the  individual  mind,  A 
similar  process  evolves  the  General  Mind — the  resi- 
dual store  of  experiences  common  to  all.  By  means 
of  Language  the  individual  shares  in  the  general  fund, 
which  thus  becomes  for  him  an  impersonal  objective 
influence.  To  it  each  appeals.  We  all  assimilate 
some  of  its  material,  and  help  to  increase  its  store. 
Not  only  do  we  find  ourselves  confronting  Nature, 
to  whose  order  we  must  conform,  but  confronting 
Society,  whose  laws  we  must   obey.      We   have   to 

VOL.  in.  L 


162        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

learn  what  Nature  is  and  does,  what  our  fellow- men 
think  and  will,  and  unless  we  learn  aright  and  act  in 
conformity,  we  are  inexorably  punished. 

120.  While  calling  attention  to  the  General  Mind, 
it  may  not  be  superfluous  to  warn  some  readers 
ao-ainst  a  metaphysical  fallacy.  The  abstraction  Mind, 
once  extricated  from  the  concrete  facts  of  Sentience, 
is  by  logical  necessity  immaterial,  simple,  one  ;  for  it 
is  a  symbol  like  Virtue,  Cause,  Number,  &c.  As  a 
symbol,  it  has  concrete  realities  for  its  significates; 
but  this  does  not  suffice  for  those  who,  having  per- 
sonified the  abstraction,  accept  it  as  a  res  completa, 
which  may  be  studied  apart  from  its  significates. 
Not  only  has  this  mistake  been  committed  with 
respect  to  the  individual  mind — which  has  in  con- 
sequence been  studied  apart  from  the  organism — but 
also,  though  less  frequently,  with  regard  to  the 
General  Mind,  which  has  been  detached  from  the 
individuals,  not  merely  as  an  abstraction,  but  as  a 
res  completa;  and  thus  the  World-process  has  been 
assigned  to  a  Soul  of  the  World. 

We  have  not  here  to  discuss  such  metaphysical 
questions.  For  our  present  purpose,  it  is  enough  to 
recognise  that  there  are  men,  and  there  is  Humanity: 
there  are  minds,  and  besides  the  individual  minds 
there  is  the  Human  Mind.  With  the  individual 
point  of  view  we  must  always  combine  the  general. 
Thus,  we  may  note  the  deficiencies  and  peculiarities 
of  various  minds,  and  such  observations  may  greatly 
facilitate  our  analysis  ;  but  they  are  noted  as  excep- 
tions, they  are  excluded  from  the  General  Mind  ;  just 
as  errors,  though  logically  arrived  at,  are  excluded 
from   Logic.      If  we   rise   from   particular   facts   to 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  1G3 

general  facts,  when  once  the  generalities  have  been 
reached,  we  apply  them  to  all  particulars,  to  note  in 
how  far  they  accord  with  the  generalities.  Only 
when  this  application  is  congruous,  and  the  new  par- 
ticular is  brought  under  the  general  head,  do  we  con- 
sider it  explained.  If  the  new  fact  is  inconsistent 
with  general  experience,  we  seek  its  conditions  in 
some  exceptional  details.  For  example,  the  general 
fact  that  mutton  is  excellent  food  for  man  causes  us 
unhesitatingly  to  conclude  that  the  first  hungry  man 
we  have  to  feed  may  safely  be  fed  with  mutton  ;  but 
it  sometimes  occurs  that  the  hungry  man  is  one  to 
whom  mutton  is  a  poison.  We  must  not  ignore  or 
reject  such  experiences ;  we  must  seek  the  points  of 
difference  in  the  organic  conditions  ;  and  these,  when 
found,  will  form  a  new  generality.  Thus  also  with 
mental  differences.  We  feel  in  ourselves  and  ob- 
serve in  others  certain  sequences  of  sensation  and 
thought,  which  we  detach  as  uniformities  (laws) 
of  Sensibility  and  Logic.  Extending  our  researches 
over  various  races  and  epochs,  we  come  upon  seeming 
contradictions  to  these  uniformities.  We  then  con- 
clude that  men  do  not  always  feel  alike  under  like 
external  circumstances.*     They  may  be  deficient  in 

*  "  La  lecture  des  ouvrages  ecrits  k  Fetranger  sur  les  maladies  ner- 
veuses  m'a  souvent  fait  songer  k  certaines  6tudes  de  pathologie  com- 
parative, qui  s'appliqueraient  a  rechercher  curieusement  les  alterations 
que  les  types  uiorbides  de  cette  classe  peuvent  eprouver,  sans  rien 
perdre  cependant  de  leur  autonomie,  suivantles  climats,  les  nationalites, 
les  races,  &c.  Le  plus  souvent  on  n'aurait  k  relever,  dans  une  etude  de 
ce  genre,  que  des  nuances  delicates  ;  mais  la  deviation  peut  aller  parfois 
jusqu'sL  s'accuser  par  des  modifications  plus  ou  moins  profondes,  alors 
mSnie  qu'il  s'agit  seulement  de  pays  limitrophes  et  places  sous  des  lati- 
tudes tres-comparables.  Ainsi — pour  ne  citer  qu'un  exemple  que  j'avais 
encore  tout  dernierement  sous  les  yeux,  et  c'est  1^  un  sujet  que  je  me 
reserve  de  developper  quelque  jour, — la  nevrose  hysterique,  eu  Angle- 


164  PROBLEMS    OF    LIFE   AND    MIND. 

certain  sensibilities,  so  that  they  will  react  differently 
under  stimuli.  They  may  be  deficient  in  certain  ex- 
periences, so  that  they  are  unaffected  by  what  pro- 
foundly agitates  others.  Noting  these  exceptions,  we 
seek  their  conditions,  and  these  when  found  are 
erected  into  new  uniformities.  And  out  of  all  the 
uniformities  there  is  formed  a  conception  of  the 
Human  Mind. 

121.  Our  search  for  the  conditions,  whether  general 
or  special,  is  biological  or  sociological.  And,  since  men 
differ  more  in  their  social  relations  than  in  their  physi- 
ological relations,  it  is  in  the  former  that  we  should 
first  seek  the  explanation  of  intellectual  and  moral 
differences  not  obviously  assignable  to  differences  of 
structure.  It  is  here  also  we  must  seek  for  many 
uniformities.  Men  living  always  in  groups  co-operate 
like  the  organs  in  an  organism.  Their  actions  have 
a  common  impulse  and  a  common  end.  Their  desires 
and  opinions  bear  the  common  stamp  of  an  imper- 
sonal direction.  Much  of  their  life  is  common  to  all. 
The  roads,  market-places  and  temples,  are  for  each 
and  all.  The  experiences,  the  dogmas,  and  the 
doctrines  are  for  each  and  all.  Customs  arise,  and 
are  formulated  in  laws,  the  restraint  of  all.  The 
customs,  born  of  the  circumstances,  immanent  in  the 

terre,  difFfere  assur^ment  de  ce  qxi'elle  est  en  France,  par  des  traits  symp- 
tomatiques  souvent  tres-accentues.  L'heinianesthesie  totale,  entre 
autres  particularites  dignes  d'etre  relevees,  et  aussi  le  grand  mal  hystero- 
6pileptique,  ces  phenomenes  qui  dans  I'espfece  sont,  on  pent  le  dire, 
vulgaires  chez  nous,  ne  s'observent  que  trfes-rarement  de  I'autre  cote  du 
d6troit,  tandis  que  les  contractures  permanentes  des  membres  et  bien 
d'autres  symptomes  du  mSnie  ordre,  designds  quelquefois  par  nos  voisins 
sous  le  nom  A' hysteric  locale,  y  sont  au  contraire  chose  commune." — 
Charcot  :  Preface  to  the  translation  of  EosenthaVs  Diseases  of  the 
Nervous  System. 


THE   STUDY   OP   PSYCHOLOGY.  165 

social  conditions,  are  consciously  extricated  and  pre- 
scribed as  the  rules  of  life ;  each  new  generation  is 
born  in  this  social  medium,  and  has  to  adapt  itself  to 
the  established  forms.  Society,  though  constituted 
by  individuals,  has  a  powerful  reaction  on  every 
individual.  "  In  the  infancy  of  nations,"  said  Mon- 
tesquieu, "man  forms  the  state  ;  in  their  maturity  the 
state  forms  the  man."  It  is  thus  also  with  the  collec- 
tive Experience  of  the  race  fashioning  the  Experience 
of  the  individual.  It  makes  a  man  accept  what  he 
cannot  understand,  and  obey  what  he  does  not  believe. 
His  thoughts  are  only  partly  his  own ;  they  are  also 
the  thoughts  of  others.  His  actions  are  guided  by 
the  will  of  others ;  even  in  rebellion  he  has  them  in 
his  mind.  His  standard  is  outside.  That  is  true 
which  all  men  affirm,  and  no  experience  contradicts : 
consensus  gentium.  If  a  man  cannot  see  this  truth,  he 
is  pronounced  to  be  an  anomaly  or  a  madman.  If  he 
does  not  feel  what  all  feel,  he  is  thrown  out  of  account, 
except  in  the  reckoning  of  abnormities. 

122.  Individual  experiences  being  limited  and 
individual  spontaneity  feeble,  we  are  strengthened 
and  enriched  by  assimilating  the  experiences  of  others. 
A  nation,  a  tribe,  a  sect  is  the  medium  of  the  indi- 
vidual mind,  as  a  sea,  a  river,  or  a  pond  is  the  medium 
of  a  fish  :  through  this  it  touches  the  outlying  world, 
and  is  touched  by  it ;  but  the  direct  motions  of  its 
activity  are  within  this  circle.  The  nation  affects  the 
sect,  the  sect  the  individual.  Not  that  the  individual 
is  passive,  he  is  only  directed ;  he,  too,  reacts  on  the 
sect  and  nation,  helping  to  create  the  social  life  of 
which  he  partakes.  The  laws  of  Human  Nature  con- 
stitute a  Social  Mechanism   analogous  to  that  indi- 


166        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

vidual  Mechanism  -whicli  is  modified  by  Experience. 
Civilisation  is  the  accumulation  of  experiences  ;  and 
since  it  is  this  accumulated  wealth  which  is  the  tradi- 
tion of  the  race,  we  may  say  with  Comte  that  the 
Past  more  and  more  dominates  the  Present,  precisely 
as  in  the  individual  case  it  is  the  registered  experi- 
ences w^hich  more  and  more  determine  the  feelings 
and  opinions. 

123.  Human  Knowledge  is  pre-eminently  distin- 
guished from  Animal  Knowledge  by  this  collective 
experience.  I  have  never  in  my  own  person  experi- 
enced the  effects  of  a  poison,  but  I  have  made  the 
experience  of  others  my  own,  have  taken  it  up  into 
my  system  of  knowledge,  and  I  act  upon  it  with  con- 
fidence. I  have  never  seen  the  Ganges,  nor  measured 
the  earth's  diameter ;  but  these  enter  into  my  world 
of  experience,  and  regulate  my  conduct,  with  the 
same  certainty  as  my  direct  experience  of  the  Trent 
or  the  acreage  of  my  property.  What  I  have 
directly  experienced  by  sensible  contact  forms  but  a 
small  part  of  my  mental  wealth  ;  and  even  that  part 
has  been  largely  determined  by  the  experience  of 
others.  The  consolidations  of  convergent  thought  in 
Social  Forms,  scientific  theories,  works  of  Art,  and, 
above  all,  Language,  are  incessantly  acting  on  me. 
Ideas  are  forces  :  the  existence  of  one  determines  our 
reception  of  others.  Each  novel  impression  has  to  be 
assimilated  by  the  existing  mass  of  residual  impres- 
sions ;  each  new  conclusion  has  to  be  affiliated  on  the 
old,  dovetailed  into  the  rest,  made  congruent  with  the 
system  of  thought.  In  the  great  total  of  collective 
Experience, — as  in  that  of  the  individual, — absurd 
perversions  and  wild  fancies  take  their  place  beside 


THE   STUDY   OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  167 

exact  correspondences  of  feeling  and  fact,  and  truths 
that  are  unshakable  ;  it  is  a  shifting  mass  of  truth 
and  error,  for  ever  becoming  more  and  more  sifted 
and  organised  into  permanent  structures  of  germina- 
ting fertility  or  of  fossilised  barrenness.  Our  mental 
furniture  shows  the  htic  a  hrac  of  prejudice  beside 
the  fashion  of  the  hour ;  our  oj)inions  are  made  up  of 
shadowy  associations,  imperfect  memories,  echoes  of 
other  men's  voices,  mingling  with  the  reactions  of  our 
own  sensibility.  Thus  it  is  that  a  mass  of  incoherent 
and  unreasoned  premisses  are  brought  to  bear  on  the 
evidence  for  any  new  opinion,  as  for  any  novel  fact : 
this  is  the  unrecognised  standard  by  which  the  con- 
clusion is  determined.  The  most  rational  of  men 
mingles  with  premisses  logically  assignable  obscure 
premisses  of  which  he  can  give  no  account.  It  is  only 
in  the  exact  sciences  that  conclusions  are  clearly 
reasoned  out.  The  student  comes  to  Mathematics 
unperverted,  in  so  far  as  he  brings  with  him  no  un- 
mathematical  preconceptions  liable  to  disturb  the 
demonstrations.  Each  step  in  advance  is  seen  to  be 
merely  the  writing  out  of  what  has  been  already 
demonstrated  or  intuited,  added  to  the  novel  data 
which  may  also  be  intuited  or  demonstrated ;  there  is 
neither  vagueness  nor  oscillation  in  the  premisses, 
there  can,  therefore,  be  none  in  the  conclusion.  Not  so 
in  the  Moral  Sciences  or  in  the  judgment  of  ordinary 
affairs.  Here  the  evidence  is  complicated,  uncertain ; 
the  premisses  lie  partly  amid  obscure  experiences  of 
the  past,  and  partly  in  judgments  taken  up  by  hear- 
say or  precipitation,  and  fixed  in  tendencies  by  long 
familiarity.  So  that  the  inquirer,  who  has  in  all 
sincerity  examined  the  evidence  proffered  for  the  new 


168  PROBLEMS    OF   LIFE   AND    MIND. 

opinion,  seeking  far  and  wide  for  the  data,  has,  in 
fact,  been  throughout  interpreting  this  evidence  by 
the  standard  of  his  formed  conviction.  If  he  began 
his  search  with  a  belief  in  the  miraculous,  he  readily 
assimilated  all  the  details  which  confirmed  that  belief, 
rejecting  the  rest  as  incongruous  with  his  knowledge. 
If  he  bes^an  with  a  conviction  that  miracles  are  in- 
credible,  no  amount  of  evidence  will  shake  him;  he 
will  simply  regard  the  evidence  as  imperfect.  A  deep 
longing  for  some  direct  proof  of  existence  after  death 
has  made  hundreds  of  people  accept  the  grossest  im- 
postures of  "Spiritualism,"  impostures  which  contra- 
dicted the  most  massive  experiences  of  the  race,  and 
which  had  nothing  to  support  them  save  this  emotional 
credulity  acting  where  direct  knowledge  was  wholly 
absent.  Because  men  did  not  know  how  the  appear- 
ances were  produced, — the  means  of  knowledge  being 
carefully  withheld, — they  willingly  accepted  the  ex- 
planation which  suited  their  preconceptions,  disregard- 
ing the  incongruous  and  often  degrading  circumstances 
which  would  otherwise  have  repelled  their  belief. 
And  that  this  is  so  may  be  readily  proved.  For  in 
the  absence  of  all  positive  knowledge  how  the  tables 
were  moved,  or  the  lights  and  flowers  were  produced, 
there  could  be  no  ground  for  concluding  that  these 
eff'ects  were  produced  by  spirits.  What  data  have  we 
for  supposing  that  spirits  are  thus  occupied  ?  All 
would  reject  the  hypothesis  that  the  agent  was  an 
invisible  dragon,  not  because  they  know  more  about 
spirits  than  about  dragons,  but  because  the  idea  of 
the  dragon  is  incongruous  with  their  preconception 
and  with  their  desire. 

124.  Conceptions  once  assimilated  by  the  General 


THE   STUDY   Or   PSYCHOLOGY.  169 

Mind  become  "  necessities  of  thought  "  for  the  indivi- 
dual, just  as  Eailways,  once  established,  become  neces- 
sities of  transport.  The  rules  of  Arithmetic  were  late 
in  mental  evolution,  and  are  still  inconceivable  by  the 
bulk  of  mankind ;  but  having  been  formulated  and 
incorporated  in  the  General  Mind,  they  are  easily 
learned  by  infants,  and  by  philosophers  declared  to  be 
"  necessities  of  thought."  The  doctrine  of  evolution 
is  becoming  such  a  "  necessity  of  thought ; "  only  a 
few  years  ago  some  of  its  present  advocates  were 
among  its  bitter  opponents.  The  idea  of  Progress  was 
no  more  suspected  by  our  ancestors  than  the  exist- 
ence of  Magnetism.  From  the  speculations  of  the  few 
it  has  passed  into  the  commonplaces  of  the  many. 

That  conceptions  once  incorporated  in  the  General 
Mind  become  forces  which  coerce  the  individual  is 
conspicuous  in  the  terrible  effects  due  to  the  idea  of 
"  saving  souls."  This  monstrous  fiction  of  speculative 
logic  scattered  the  amassed  wealth  of  Grecian  and 
Moorish  culture,  repressed  for  centuries  the  search 
after  truth,  made  Doubt  a  sin,  and  placed  the  inves- 
tigation of  Nature  on  a  par  with  magical  incantation. 
Nor  did  it  end  here.  It  embittered  and  embitters  in 
many  ways  the  lives  of  those  whom  it  professed  to 
save,  and  did  its  best  to  make  Hell  a  reality  in  this 
world  for  those  who  ventured  to  doubt  its  reality  in 
another.  Happily  the  power  of  conceptions  is  not 
limited  to  disastrous  errors,  but  extends  to  beneficent 
truths.  If  irrational  conceptions  have  made  man 
miserable  and  kept  him  ignorant,  rational  conceptions 
have  made  him  less  miserable  and  more  wise.  Our 
pressing  need  to  understand  the  facts  of  this  universe 
in  which  we  live  has  forced  us  to  encourage  the  pur- 


170        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

suit  of  truth.  New  and  larger  conceptions  of  man's 
nature  and  destiny  have  been  evolved.  These,  slowly 
altering  the  structure  of  the  General  Mind,  alter  the 
Social  Forms  which  express  it,  and  both  react  on  the 
individual. 

Parenthetically,  let  us  note  the  vast  change  in  the 
conceptions  of  the  world  and  of  man  which  have  issued 
from  the  discoveries  of  Copernicus  and  Cuvier,  by  sub- 
stituting Evolution  for  Creation.  And  to  the  study 
of  the  History  of  the  World  has  succeeded  the  History 
of  Mind.  Every  little  detail  which  tells  of  the  mental 
condition  of  ancestral  races  is  now  of  priceless  value. 
Formerly  men  dug  up  ruined  cities  and  opened  ancient 
tombs  in  the  search  for  golden  ornaments  or  works  of 
art.  Now  they  dig  with  greater  eagerness  for  flints 
and  the  rude  implements  of  prehistoric  races,  because 
these  throw  light  on  the  evolution  of  Mind. 


CHAPTER  X. 


THE    MENTAL    FORMS. 


125.  The  recognition  of  Collective  Experience  com- 
bining with  inherited  tendencies  in  the  formation  of 
Experience  for  the  individual,  will  perhaps  be  inter- 
preted by  Kant's  admirers  as  an  illustration  of  his 
doctrine  of  Mental  Forms,  or  a  priori  constituents  of 
the  mind.  Kant  taught  that  all  knowledge  arises  in 
individual  experience,  but  not  all  out  of  it.  There  are 
other  factors,  and  these  are  transcendental  and  a 
priori;  not  drawn  from  experience,  since  they  are  its 
necessary  conditions,  and  therefore  precede  it ;  not 
dependent  on  the  organism,  nor  reducible  to  sensible 
terms,  but  constituents  of  mind  before  mind  comes 
in  contact  with  Nature  ;  and  it  is  this  contact  of 
mind  with  Nature  which  is  experience. 

Kant's  primary  purpose  was  not  to  expound  a 
psychological  doctrine,  but  a  metaphysical  theory  of 
knowledge.  He  wished  to  fix  the  limitations  of  in- 
quiry by  assigning  the  limits  of  possible  knowledge. 
So  little  psychological  investigation  does  he  attempt, 
and  that  little  so  imperfectly,  that  even  when  dealing 
with  the  sensible  data,  it  is  not  to  Feeling  as  such,  nor 
to  its  evolution,  that  he  refers,  but  simply  to  its  rela- 
tion to  Knowing.  He  starts  with  the  developed  pro- 
ducts, and  never  pauses  to  investigate  their  produc- 
tion— physiological  or  psychological.     He  takes  the 


172        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

mind  of  the  adult  and  cultivated  classes.  Therein 
he  recognises  certain  modes  of  acting  which  deter- 
mine the  possible  actions,  as  the  anatomist  recog- 
nises certain  forms  of  structure  which  determine 
bodily  functions.  These  Forms  of  Intuition  and 
these  Rules  of  Reasoning  shape  our  experiences  and 
determine  our  knowledge  as  inexorable  conditions  : 
we  can  no  more  think  in  contradiction  to  them  than 
a  solution  can  crystallise  into  angles  that  are  round. 

126.  Here,  as  in  so  many  cases,  we  see  the  conse- 
quence of  operating  on  abstractions  without  a  clear 
and  abiding  sense  of  the  concretes  they  symbolise. 
Mind  apart  from  Nature  is  one  of  these ;  Experience 
is  another.  The  first  is  a  metempirical  figment  when 
it  is  not  a  logical  abstraction.  The  second,  when 
reduced  to  its  concretes,  is  the  total  of  certain  classes 
of  phenomena  manifested  by  a  living  organism  :  it 
involves,  therefore,  on  the  one  hand,  a  sentient  mechan- 
ism having  certain  modes  of  reaction,  and,  on  the  other, 
an  external  medium  having  certain  modes  of  stimula- 
tion. The  experiences  of  this  organism  are  the  modifi- 
cations it  undergoes.  These  are  o^eneralised  in  the  ab- 
stract  term  Experience.  That  all  phenomena  have  their 
conditions  is  a  truism  ;  but  the  conditions  are  really  im- 
manent in,  and  only  theoretically  prior  to,  the  results. 
There  are  not  conditions  existing  apart,  and  results 
called  into  existence  by  them ;  but  the  conditions, 
ideally  separated  as  components,  find  their  expression 
in  the  resultant.  "We  may  ideally  separate  the  or- 
ganism and  its  inherited  modes  of  reaction  from  one 
and  all  of  the  particular  stimulations  on  which  it 
reacts,  and  in  this  sense  regard  the  reacting  organism 
as  a  condition  of  the  reaction,  and  the  reaction  as  a 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  173 

condition  of  the  resulting  sensation  or  movement. 
We  know  what  we  are  doing  by  such  distinctions. 
But  to  suppose  that  the  experiences  which  are  results 
of  stimulation  and  reaction  have  any  other  compo- 
nents than  these  is  a  grave  error  ;  and  to  detacli 
Experience  from  the  Organism  is  merely  an  artifice 
of  exposition  ;  while  to  detach  from  the  Organism  its 
modes  of  reaction,  erecting  these  into  Mental  Forms 
which  have  no  physical  basis,  is  what  science  cannot 
accept,  even  as  an  artifice. 

127.  No  physiologist  will  deny  that  the  organism 
has  an  inherited  structure  which  causes  it  to  react 
in  particular  ways,  and  that  this  structure  has  been 
determined  by  ancestral  modifications  ;  that  is  to  say, 
ancestral  modes  of  reaction  help  to  fashion  the  indi- 
vidual modes  of  reaction,  and  the  stored-up  wealth  of 
collective  experience  enriches  the  experience  of  suc- 
ceeding generations.  It  is  in  so  far  the  condition  of 
possible  experience  for  the  individual  that  without  it 
his  reactions  would  have  been  diflferent.  Kant  first 
separates  Experience  from  the  concrete  facts  of  which 
it  is  the  abstract  expression,  detaches  it  fr^m  the 
organism  and  the  modes  of  reaction  which  belong  to 
the  inherited  structure,  and  then  argues  that  without 
the  modes  of  reaction  such  as  Space  and  Time  repre- 
sent, no  experience  is  possible.  Findiug  that  these 
general  Forms  of  Sensibility  cannot  be  given  in  in- 
dividual sensations  which  presuppose  them,  he  argues 
that  they  cannot  belong  to  the  sensations,  nor  to  the 
sentient  mechanism,  er^o  they  must  be  a  'priori  con- 
stituents of  Mind. 

128.  This  doctrine  has  exercised  a  strange  fascina- 
tion over  men's  minds,  and  I  cannot  let  it  pass  unchal- 


174        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

lenged.  The  psychologist  is  as  well  entitled  to  pos- 
tulate Laws  of  Thought — or  Mental  Forms — as  the 
Physicist  to  postulate  Laws  of  Motion  and  Laws  of 
Nature.  But  both  should  know  what  it  is  they  are 
postulating,  and  why  they  do  it.  So  little  do  the 
generality  of  men  know  this,  that  they  interpret  these 
abstract  expressions  as  the  conditions  and  determi- 
nants of  the  concrete  phenomena  from  which  the 
expressions  are  abstracted.  On  this  interpretation 
Laws  pre-exist ;  the  movements  and  other  phenomena 
issue  from  them.  There  are  thus  not  only  the  move- 
ments, but  Laws  of  Motion  superadded  to  all  the 
conditions  of  movement.  Thus  crudely  stated,  the 
fallacy  is  obvious.  From  the  infinitely  varying  con- 
ditions we  extricate  certain  constants,  and  to  these  we 
affix  a  mathematical  expression.  The  parabola  de- 
scribed in  the  course  of  a  cannon-ball,  the  eclipse 
of  the  planetary  orbit,  the  curve  of  a  wave,  &c.,  are 
mathematical  expressions  :  it  is  absurd  to  personify 
these  as  motor  agencies.  In  like  manner,  from  the 
varieties  of  Feeling  we  extricate  certain  constant 
appearances  which  we  call  Laws  of  Sensibility,  Forms 
of  Thought,  Logical  Eules.  These  we  describe  and 
classify,  as  we  describe  and  classify  the  planes  of 
cleavage  of  crystals.  But  to  suppose  that  these  laws 
have  an  a  'priori  independence,  and  render  our  feel- 
ings and  knowledge  possible,  is  equivalent  to  the 
supposition  of  planes  of  cleavage  floating  about  in  the 
Cosmos,  and  when  descending  upon  certain  solutions 
fashioning  them  into  crystals. 

]  29.  It  has  been  thought  a  great  achievement  of 
Kant  to  have  separated  the  Form  of  Knowledge  from 
the  Matter  of  Knowledge,  and  to  have  made  the  first 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  175 

tbe  a  priori  condition  of  both  Knowledge  and  Ex- 
perience. I  see  nothing  in  it  but  the  common  error 
of  confounding  logical  with  real  distinctions,  and  the 
revival  of  the  Aristotelian  doctrine  of  Form  and  Mat- 
ter which  the  advance  of  science  had  pushed  aside. 
To  me  it  is  significant  that  Kant  nowhere  raises  the 
question  whether  animals  have  likewise  these  Mental 
Forms  as  a  priori  conditions  of  their  experiences  and 
cognitions.  If  he  denied  the  existence  of  these  forms, 
he  must  have  implicitly  denied  that  animals  had 
experiences  of  space  and  time  relations.  This  being 
too  absurd  a  notion  for  us  to  attribute  to  him,  we 
have  no  alternative  but  to  assume  that  he  endowed 
animals  with  the  forms.  On  this  supposition  we 
should  have  to  inquire  whether  he  held  that  animals 
had  minds  independent  of  their  organisms,  or  minds 
that  were  but  the  activity  of  the  organisms?  On 
the  latter  alternative  his  notion  of  the  universality 
of  these  forms  receives  a  rude  shock ;  for  if  the  in- 
tuitions of  space  and  time  are  the  activities  of  the 
organism,  they  must  differ  in  animals  and  men  in 
accordance  with  differences  of  structure.  Hence  w^hile 
animals  of  a  much  simpler  structure  than  ours  would 
only  intuite  space  of  two  dimensions,  a  structure 
more  complex  than  ours  w^ould  intuite  a  space  of 
four,  five,  or  n  dimensions — a  conclusion  which  the 
Imaginary  Geometry  of  Lobatschewsky,  Eiemann, 
and  Helmlioltz  show^s  to  be  acceptable. 

But  Kant  carefully  avoids  risking  his  position  by 
a  reference  to  organic  structure.  He  eliminates  all 
concrete  conditions.  He  will  not  even  admit  ances- 
tral influences.  His  forms  are  pure  abstractions,  and 
he  declines  to  predicate  anything  of  them  except  their 


176        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

^-priority  and  universality.  He  finds  tlie  forms  as 
facts,  and  rejects  all  attempts  to  reduce  them  to  their 
factors.  It  was  open  to  him  to  regard  Mind  as  a 
function  of  the  organism,  and  the  Mental  Forms  as 
the  peculiar  modes  of  reaction  organised  in  ancestral 
modifications.  He  rejects  this.  He  will  not  even 
admit  innate  ideas.* 

130.  Observation  has  shown  that  we  do  not  bring 
on  our  entrance  into  the  world  definite  intuitions  of 
space,  nor  do  our  first  sensible  impressions  call  forth 
such  intuitions ;  they  are  slowly  formed.  To  answer 
this  by  saying  that  we  bring  with  us  the  abstract 
form  of  Space,  which  renders  possible  the  evolution  of 
concrete  space  experiences,  is  to  place  the  general 
conception  before  the  particulars  it  generalises.  Ap- 
plied to  our  motor-intuitions  the  fallacy  is  obvious. 
No  one,  seeino-  that  we  do  not  at  birth  brino[  definite 
intuitions  directing  the  movements  of  our  limbs,  will 
assert  that  we  bring  with  us  a  Form  of  movement 
which  is  anything  more  than  an  abstract  expression 
for  all  the  motor  conditions  actually  present  in  the 
organism.  The  theory  of  Experience  demands  that  a 
mechanism  be  ready  to  respond  to  stimuli ;  and  the 
theory  of  the  Mechanism  demands  that  an  experience 

*  Yet  much  of  hia  argumentation  implies  something  very  like  it. 
For  a  striking  example,  consider  his  explanation  of  the  cries  and  struggles 
of  the  new-born  infant.  These,  he  says,  are  expressions  not  of  pain 
but  of  rage — "  rage  because  the  infant  wishes  to  move,  yet  feels  its  inca- 
pacity as  a  restriction  wkerehi/ it  is  deprived  of  its  freedom"  {Anthropo- 
logie,  p.  323,  note).  Hegel  transcends  this.  He  sees  in  the  infant's 
squalls  and  struggles  "the  revelation  of  man's  higher  nature."  By 
euch  activity  the  infant  manifests  himself  as  "  penetrated  by  the  con- 
viction of  his  right  to  claim  the  satisfaction  of  his  needs  from  the  outer 
world,  and  that  the  independence  of  this  outer  world  vanishes  in  the  pre- 
sence of  mail,  sinks  into  servile  insignificance.  Hence  the  impetuous, 
imperious  tone"  {Encyklopcedie,  W.  vii.  93). 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  177 

of  some  kind  should  have  come  into  being  with  the 
stimulation.  Unless  we  brought  with  us  a  mechanism 
so  constituted  as  to  be  capable  of  space-feelings,  no 
contact  with  external  objects  would  excite  them. 
But  it  is  a  mistake  to  detach  this  capability,  personify 
it,  and  call  it  the  Pure  Form  of  space-feelings,  ante- 
rior to  and  independent  of  the  stimuli  and  the  me- 
chanism which  condition  such  feelinns. 

131.  In  conclusion,  we  may  adopt  Kant's  phrase 
that  "  all  Knowledge  has  its  rise  in  Experience,  but 
not  all  out  of  Experience,"  if  we  abstract  Experience 
from  the  sentient  mechanism  with  its  inherited  modes 
of  reaction,  or  if  we  consider  only  that  to  be  Experi- 
ence wliich  the  individual  himself  has  sensibly  reacted 
on.  The  last  chapter  showed  how  it  is  the  great 
human  privilege  to  assimilate  the  experiences  of 
others.  Our  feelings  are  products  of  our  personal 
stimulations,  and  of  the  residua  of  ancestral  stimula- 
tions. Our  knowledge  is  the  product  of  our  own 
experiences,  and  of  the  stored-up  experiences  of  our 
fellows.  The  individual  savai^e  has  no  knowledge  of 
the  Law  of  Causality ;  there  can  be  no  capability  of 
conceiving  it  until  experiences  have  evolved  it,  and  it 
has  taken  its  place  in  the  collective  thought  of  the 
race.  The  sava«je  cannot  be  made  to  think  that  there 
can  be  no  variation  in  an  event  when  there  is  no 
variation  in  its  conditions.  The  necessity  of  causal 
sequence  is  inconceivable  to  him,  because  his  expe- 
riences seem  to  contradict  it.  But  that  which  he  can- 
not be  made  to  think  becomes  in  time  so  oro;anised 
in  the  General  Mind  as  an  axiom  which  it  is  impos- 
.  sible  to  doubt,  that  philosophers  are  found  who  pro- 
claim it  a  fundamental  and  cl  priori  Law  of  the  Mind.. 

VOL.  III.  M 


CHAPTER    XL 

ANALYSIS   AND   SYNTHESIS. 

132.  Understanding  that  Method  demands  the  co- 
operation of  Introspection  with  Observation  for  the 
collection  and  collation  of  data,  we  have  further  to 
specify  the  range  and  the  limitation  proper  to  the 
artifice  of  Analysis.  Taking  our  stand  on  the  posi- 
tion that  whatever  is  knowable  must  lie  within  the 
range  of  Experience,  we  regard  every  expression  which 
cannot  be  reduced  to  lower  terms  as  an  ultimate  of 
Speculation ;  and  this  even  should  there  be  a  suspicion 
that  possibly  at  some  future  day  it  may  also  be  re- 
ducible to  lower  terms.  Force  is  an  ultimate.  Sen- 
sibility is  an  ultimate.  We  cannot  reduce  either  of 
these  to  lower  terms :  we  can  only  say  they  are  what 
they  signify.  But  Experience  is  not  an  ultimate,  for 
it  can — ideally — be  analysed  into  components.  Nor  is 
Consciousness  an  ultimate,  if  understood  as  a  special 
Mode  of  Sensibility. 

The  psychologist  therefore  will  no  more  ask,  What 
is  Sensibility  ?  than  the  physicist  asks,  What  is  Elec- 
tricity? Describing  what  Electricity  doeSf  the  phy- 
sicist tells  us  what  it  is:  its  manifestations  he  can 
classify  and  formulate  in  laws.  The  psychologist 
must  be  equally  reserved.  Recording  the  focts,  he 
will  seek  their  ascertainable  conditions  by  observation 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  179 

and  experiment,  but  not  seek  these  "  in  the  field  be- 
hind phenomena."  To  get  at  the  conditions  he  must 
employ  the  artifice  of  analysis,  he  must  do  as  the 
child  spontaneously  does  with  every  object  which 
comes  within  its  grasp,  namely,  endeavour  to  pull  it 
to  pieces  "to  see  what  it  is  made  of."  But  this  pro- 
cedure needs  correction.  The  mind  is  not  made  oi 
separable  pieces.  Each  piece  has  significance  only  in 
its  relation  to  the  others. 

133.  Even  in  physical  research  the  analysis  which 
decomposes  a  total  into  several  components  must 
alw\ays  be  followed  by  a  synthesis  w^hich  reconstructs 
the  whole,  and  thus,  restoring  all  the  suppressed  con- 
ditions, reuniting  what  provisionally  was  separated, 
views  the  parts  in  the  light  reflected  from  the  whole. 
No  fact  is  explained  by  the  enumeration  or  exhibition 
of  its  factors  as  isolated  elements ;  only  by  these  in 
their  combination  and  mutual  dependence.  Comte 
was  guilty  of  an  oversight  when  he  defined  the 
chemist's  problem  to  be  that  of  "  determining  the 
properties  of  compounds  by  the  properties  of  their 
components,"  for  this  is  impossible.  The  properties 
of  water  could  never  be  determined  by  enumerating 
the  projDcrties  of  oxygen  and  hydrogen ;  no  salt  is 
discernible  in  its  acid,  nor  in  its  base.  The  properties 
of  compounds  must  be  observed  in  the  reactions  ot 
the  compounds.  We  may  resolve  these  compounds 
into  their  components,  but  these  are  then  new  totals, 
and  have  forfeited  all  their  qualities  as  components, 
the  oxygen  being  no  longer  watery.  Only  by  recon- 
structing these,  restoring  the  elements  w^hich  analysis 
has  dissipated,  can  we  get  the  water.  We  have  taken 
it  to  pieces,  but  unless  we  know  all  the  pieces,  and 


180        PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

the  way  these  are  arranged,  we  cannot  see  the  whole 
in  the  parts. 

Still  greater  is  the  difficulty  in  psychological ,  re- 
search. Here  observation  is  always  that  of  resultants, 
never  of  components.  Real  analysis,  such  as  that  of 
the  chemist,  is  impossible.  The  components  have  no 
observable  existence  :  they  are  only  inferred.  I  mean, 
that  a  feeling  cannot  be  taken  to  pieces  like  a  salt, 
these  pieces  separately  studied,  first  isolated,  next  in 
combination.  All  the  stages  of  a  process  must  -be 
completed  before  the  feeling  emerges.  In  no  one  stage' 
is  it  a  feeling.  The  separation,  therefore,  of  the  stages, 
the  analysis  of  the  feeling  into  its  elements,  is  ideal 
only.  Moreover,  each  of  these  ideal  elements  has  a 
history.  The  elements  of  an  inorganic  object,  the 
moments  of  a  dynamic  process,  are  unchangeable — 
that  is  to  say,  the  oxygen  torn  from  rust,  from  water, 
or  from  an  animal  tissue,  reappears  with  unaltered  and 
unalterable  characters  after  every  fresh  combination. 
Not  so  the  elements  of  a  feeling  ;  the  very  tissues 
which  are  its  physical  basis  are  in  incessant  change. 

134.  Organic  functions,  we  must  often  insist,  are 
unlike  the  functions  of  machines,  which  result  from 
combinations  of  elements  that  have  no  natural  and 
indestructible  connection.  The  orscanism  is  evolved  : 
one  part  emerges  from  another,  all  parts  are  interde- 
pendent. The  functions  of  the  organism  are  merely 
specialisations  of  the  properties  coffimotn  to  all  its 
parts.  Hence  it  is  that  Sensibility  and  its  Modes, 
being  among  the  many  specialisations  of  vitality,  can- 
not be  likened  to  steam,  or  any  other  external  motor ; 
nor  can  Experience  be  likened  to  any  complex  of  parts 


THE   STUDY    OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  181 

put  together  :  it  is  no  mosaic  of  different  elements  ;  it 
is  a  living,  developing,  manifold  unity. 

But,  recognising  this,  we  are  still  compelled  to  treat 
it  as  if  the  parts  were  separable.  Thus  it  is  we  speak 
of  impressions  as  if  they  were  events  apart  from  sen- 
sations, and  sensations  as  if  they  had  an  isolated 
existence  apart  from  the  sensorial  disturbances  called 
emotions  and  cognitions.  An  impression  may  be  con- 
sidered apart  as  one  stage  in  a  complex  process  ;  a 
sensation  as  another  stage  ;  a  perception  as  a  third. 
But  in  reality,  to  understand  an  impression  as  a  psy- 
chical phenomenon,  it  must  be  seen  in  its  relations 
to  an  ultimate  sensorial  reaction.  Nor  can  any  sen- 
sation come  into  existence  without  involvinsj  the 
fundai^ental  functions  we  analytically  ascribe  to 
Thought.  Hence  the  radical  confusion  of  the  doctrine 
that  Thought  is  transformed  Sensation  ;  which  is  the 
analogue  of  the  still  deeper  and  more  widely  spread 
confusion  that  Sensation  is  the  transubstantiation  of 
a  physical  movement. 

135.  Had  the  Sensational  School  paid  more  atten- 
tion to  Biology,  it  might  have  rectified  its  hypothesis 
so  far  as  to  present  all  mental  phenomena  in  the  light 
of  Modes  of  a  common  Sensibility.  It  would  then 
have  welcomed  tlie  aid  of  Analysis,  but  recognised  its 
artifice.  It  would  not  have  overlooked  the  relation 
of  organ  to  organism,  of  part  to  the  whole  ;  nor  have 
fallen  into  the  error  of  treating  the  organism  as  a 
mosaic,  or  assemblage  of  organs,  built  up  bit  by  bit, 
acting  bit  by  bit ;  an  error  the  consequence  of  which 
is  seen  in  the  conception  of  the  JMiud  as  an  assemblage 
of  impressions,  a  mosaic  of  experiences.     Biology  tells 


182       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

US  that  tte  oreranism,  tliou^^h  differentiated  into  orfjans, 
always  is  a  total  Avliicli  acts  through  its  parts  :  each 
oro-an  derives  its  si<2;nificance  from  its  connections  with 
the  others  ;  none  has  a  function  irrespective  of  the  rest. 
And  so  of  mind.  The  notion  of  a  tabula  rasa,  on 
which  the  Senses  inscribe  their  impressions,  is  un- 
hiological.  A  percipient  organism  must  exist  before 
impressions  can  become  perceptions.  In  Condillac's 
celebrated  illustration  of  the  statue  which  would  per- 
ceive the  odour  of  a  rose  (he  says  it  would  he  this 
odour)  there  is  the  suppressed  premiss  of  an  organism 
adapted  to  the  perception.  In  the  absence  of  such  a 
percipient  factor,  the  statue  can  no  more  lawfully  be 
imagined  as  smelling  the  rose  than  it  could  be  ima- 
gined as  digesting  beef. 

136.  The  reader  will  doubtless  be  so  little  disposed 
to  question  these  remarks  that  he  may  complain  of 
their  being  urged  upon  him.  Yet,  however  cordially 
he  may  assent  to  them,  he  will,  on  inquiry,  find  that 
no  error  is  more  common  than  that  which  they  sig- 
nalise. Facts  are  constantly  confounded  with  one  or 
more  of  their  isolated  factors,  effects  assigned  to  one 
out  of  a  group  of  conditions,  premisses  suppressed  and 
never  restored,  and  organs  credited  with  the  perform- 
ance of  actions  in  -which  they  only  j^lay  a  subordinate 
part.  In  subsequent  pages  we  shall  frequently  have 
to  point  this  out. 

When  once  we  have  made  clear  to  ourselves  the 
nature  of  the  aid  derived  from  Analysis,  we  may  employ 
the  artifice  in  confidence.  Ideally  we  decompose  the 
organism  into  its  organs,  the  mind  into  its  functions 
and  faculties  ;  and  these  again  we  decompose  into  their 
components  :   physical,  physiological,  psychological. 


THE   STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  183 

"We  study  the  stimuli,  tlie  meclianisra,  and  tlie  ex- 
perience ;  that  is,  the  external  medium  in  its  action 
on  the  organism,  the  reaction  of  the  organism,  and 
the  feeling  which  is  the  subjective  asj^ect  of  that 
reaction.  The  organism,  although  a  system  of  forces 
having  its  motor  within  (§  77),  is  in  connection  with 
external  forces,  and  is  primarily  set  in  action  by  them. 
For  example,  the  motion  of  the  air  disturbs  the  equi- 
librium of  the  auditory  apparatus  which  has  its  own 
special  mode  of  reaction,  and  this  in  turn  disturbs 
the  general  centre  or  Sensorium.  These  three  ideally 
separable  stages  of  one  neural  process  may  be  studied 
separately,  although  all  three  are  necessary  elements, 
any  one  of  which  varying  will  cause  a  corresponding 
variation  in  the  final  result.  AVithout  the  pulses  of 
air,  no  sound  ;  without  the  apparatus  disturbed,  no 
Bound  ;  without  the  Sensorium,  no  sound. 

137.  Strictly  speaking,  the  foregoing  statement  is 
true  only  of  the  original  and  normal  production  of 
Sensations.  It  needs  qualification  when  we  take  into 
account  the  subsequent  reactions  of  the  already  modi- 
fied Sensorium.  Here  we  find  Experience  as  a  factor. 
By  it  sensations  may  be  reproduced  mthout  the  co- 
operation of  some  of  the  original  conditions  of  pro- 
duction. We  have,  then,  "  subjective  sensations " 
due  to  other  stimuli  than  those  of  the  sense-organ, 
revivals  of  residua  left  by  the  action  of  the  sense- 
organ. 

137*.  But  not  now  to  dwell  on  this  point,  let  us 
note  the  scientific  advantage  of  studying  the  physical 
stage  of  the  process,  the  data  of  which  are  measurable 
and  admit  of  easy  demonstration.  The  psychological 
stage  has  no  such  advantages,  but,  as  has  been  said. 


184  PROBLEMS   OF   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

compensates  exactness  by  certainty ;  if  we  can  never 
know  a  feeling  quantitatively,  we  know  it  qualita- 
tively with  unrivalled  certainty.  By  this  exactness 
on  the  one  hand,  and  this  certainty  on  the  other,  it 
has  been  found  possible  to  introduce  quantitative 
relations  between  stimuli  and  sensations,  and  a  new 
branch  of  science,  called  Psychophysics,  has  arisen. 
With  regard  to  the  intermediate  or  physiological 
stage,  there  is  at  present  no  such  exactness,  no  such 
certainty.  What  takes  place  in  the  nervous  system 
under  stimulation  and  reaction  is  neither  demonstrable 
to  Sense  nor  discernible  by  Intuition  ;  it  is,  and  will 
long  remain,  mere  guesswork.  This  may  seem  a  hard 
sentence  to  those  who  have  been  relying  on  the 
hypothesis  of  vibrations,  wave-movements,  chemical 
or  electrical  processes,  cell-functions,  seats  of  sensa- 
tion, seats  of  emotion,  seats  of  volition,  and  seats  of 
thought.  But  it  is  a  sentence  which  will  be  confirmed 
by  every  one  who  has  seriously  investigated  the 
evidence  of  such  hypotheses.  All  that  has  gained 
currency  on  this  subject  the  student  will  do  well  to 
accept  as  provisional  imagery  which  may  assist  ex- 
position, not  as  data  from  which  conclusions  may  be 
drawn.  The  hypotheses  are  not  terms  of  knowledge, 
but  terms  to  fill  our  gaps  in  knowledge.  The  mathe- 
matical precision  of  Optics  and  Acoustics  is  confined 
to  the  physical  stages  of  the  seeing  and  hearing  pro- 
cesses ;  where  the  physical  passes  into  the  physio- 
logical the  process  escapes  observation.  Between 
the  physical  and  the  psychological  moments  we  know 
there  intervenes  a  neural  moment,  a  change  in  the 
sensory  tract ;  but  what  that  change  is  we  do  not 
know.     We  know,  however,  that  it  is  not  a  process 


THE   STUDY   OF  PSYCHOLOGY.  185 

wliich  can  be  identified  with  tlie  physical  process  : 
its  movements  cannot  be  the  same  as  the  movements 
of  the  external  stimulus.  The  physicist  splits  a  beam 
of  light  by  a  prism  and  measures  the  different  wave- 
lengths of  its  constituent  colours ;  each  of  these  wave- 
lengths represents  different  degrees  of  stimulation. 
Hence  the  conclusion  that  each  colour  is  the  product 
of  each  wave-length.  We  learn  that  the  effect  of  450 
billions  of  impacts  in  a  second  is  the  sensation  of  red; 
of  589  billions,  tlie  sensation  of  green  ;  of  790  billions, 
the  sensation  of  violet.  This  seems  quite  satisfactory 
until  we  learn  that  althounjli  such  vibrations  orimn- 
ate  such  sensations,  it  is  through  some  intermediate 
agency  which  does  not  vibrate  in  these  ways,  but 
which  is  capable  of  effecting  the  sensations  by  vibra- 
tions that  are  demonstrably  different.  And  in  two 
examples  this  is  conspicuous.  First,  in  the  fact  that 
violet,  which  has  790  billions,  according  to  the  scale 
of  the  spectrum,  is  producible  also  by  the  blending  of 
red  and  blue,  that  is,  of  450  and  589  billions ;  and 
white,  which  contains  all  the  colours  of  the  spectrum, 
is  producible  by  combinations  of  greenish  blue  with 
scarlet  red,  or  of  greenish  yellow  with  violet,  or  of 
yellow  with  ultramarine.  Note  especially  that  the 
wdiites  thus  variously  produced  are  indistinguishable 
as  feelings,  but  are  physically  distinguishable  by  their 
different  reactions — the  photographic  plate  on  which 
falls  a  white  light  composed  of  red  and  greenish  blue 
yields  a  black  reaction,  whereas  under  the  yellowish- 
green  and  violet  combination  it  is  very  bright. 
Objects  illuminated  by  these  different  whites  take  on 
very  unlike  colours.  The  second  example  to  which 
allusion  was  made  is  the  fact  of  subjective  colours. 


186       PROBLEMS  OF  LIFE  AND  MIND. 

138.  Further,  a  sensation  does  not  accurately  cor- 
respond with  the  physical  stimulus  except  through 
the  j)hysiological  intermediates,  for  the  colour  of  an 
object  is  found  to  vary  with  the  portion  of  the  retina 
on  which  it  falls  :  the  geranium  flower,  which  is  scarlet 
at  the  central  portion,  is  at  the  periphery  indistinguish- 
able from  its  green  leaves.  As  with  colour  so  with 
form ;  a  subjective  transformation  takes  place.  The 
optical  image  of  a  house,  formed  on  a  camera  obscura 
or  on  the  retina,  is  not  the  mental  image  :  the  optical 
image  is  excessively  minute,  is  inverted,  and  has 
only  two  dimensions,  whereas  the  mental  image  is 
large,  erect,  and  has  three  dimensions. 

We  thus  see  that  savants  who  rely  on  the  physical 
analysis  without  adding  the  analysis  demanded  by 
Psychology  fall  into  the  opposite  error  of  that  fallen 
into  by  Goethe,  when,  relying  exclusively  on  the  psy- 
chological, he  combated  Newton's  physical  hypothesis. 
Both  analyses  are  required.  And  let  us  remember 
that  in  the  attempt  to  connect  these  two  through 
the  molecular  changes  in  the  nervous  system  we  are 
thrown  upon  what  is  very  imperfectly  known.  Be- 
tween the  structure  of  the  eye  or  ear  and  the  sensa- 
tion of  sight  or  sound  there  is  a  demonstrable  con- 
nection, every  minute  variation  in  structure  being 
accompanied  by  some  variation  in  feeling  :  the  one 
is,  therefore,  rightly  regarded  as  a  function  of  the 
other.  Between  these  organs  and  the  central  nervous 
system  there  is  likewise  a  demonstrable  connection, 
any  interruption  of  which  brings  an  interruption  in 
the  functional  operation.  So  far  Physiology  reaches ; 
but  there  its  grasp  relaxes.  Between  the  structure  of 
the  brain,  or  any  other  portion  of  the  central  system, 


THE    STUDY   OF   PSYCHOLOGY.  187 

and  the  sensations,  perceptions,  ideas  wliicli  are  its 
activities,  no  such  connection  is  discernible.  I  mean, 
that  we  know  of  no  variation  in  cerebral  structure 
which  uniformly  corresponds  with  a  variation  in 
feeling.  Possibly,  at  some  future  day,  there  may  be 
discovered  precise  relations  between  central  structure 
and  mental  functions,  analogous  to  those  now  known 
between  the  structure  of  the  eye  and  the  function  of 
vision.  But  that  day  seems  distant.  All  that  Phy- 
siology can  at  present  assure  us  of  is,  that  Mind  is  a 
function  of  the  organism ;  consequently  that  certain 
changes  in  the  organism  correspond  with  changes  in 
the  mental  states. 

139.  Herein  lies  the  necessity  of  a  constant  study 
of  the  organism  as  a  directly  available  object  of  obser- 
vation and  experiment.  In  proportion  as  this  study 
becomes  minute  and  exact,  the  facts  discerned  by  Intro- 
spection become  intelligible  and  explicable.  Not  only 
so,  but  with  this  knowledge  we  acquire  the  power  of 
intervention.  To  know  that  the  integrity  of  the  eye's 
structure  is  essential  to  normal  vision,  and  that  certain 
defects  in  crystalline  lens,  vitreous  humour,  optic  tract 
or  brain,  bring  with  them  defects  in  vision,  puts  us 
on  the  track  of  a  remedy  for  such  defects,  which  we 
correct  by  glasses  of  a  particular  curvature  or  drugs 
of  a  particular  efficacy. ^^ 

140.  Analysis,  then,  is  a  potent  and  indispensable 
instrument ;  but  its  right  use  must  be  understood. 
AVe  laugh  at  the  man  mentioned  by  Hierocles  who 
presented  a  brick  as  a  specimen  of  his  house  ;  but 

*  The  use  of  proper  spectacles  has  also  been  the  remedy  of  obscure 
nervous  disorders  never  before  suspected  to  have  any  relation  to  visual 
defects. 


188  PROBLEMS   OP   LIFE   AND   MIND. 

our  lau2:liter  does  not  drive  us  from  the  same  naivete 
in  taking  a  part  for  the  whole,  isolating  an  organ  from 
the  organism,  and  the  organism  from  its  medium. 
Having  once  accepted  such  errors,  we  need  not  be 
surprised  if  they  are  extended,  and  if  particular  cells 
in  the  brain  are  made  the  seats  of  thought.  In  read- 
ing certain  physiological  statements  respecting  the 
localisation  of  mental  functions,  I  have  asked  myself 
whether  this  premature  physiological  topography  will 
not,  by-^nd-by,  localise  the  seat  of  Life  in  the  heart, 
Sensibility  in  the  pericardium,  and  Motility  in  its 
muscular  tissue  ?  * 

One  final  remark.  Psychological  Analysis  has  for 
object  not  only  the  adult  mind  with  its  acquired  apti- 
tudes, but  also  the  stages  of  evolution  through  which 
that  mind  has  passed.  These  two  points  of  view  are 
sometimes  confused ;  and  these  well-marked  differ- 
ences in  the  phenomena  are  sought  to  be  obliterated 
by  showing  how  they  emerged  from  a  common  ground. 
An  illustration  will  make  this  plain.  To  the  physio- 
logist no  two  functions  have  better  marked  distinc- 
tions  than  Breathing  and  Swimming ;  nothing  but 

*  As  a  specimen  of  the  purely  fanciful  hypotheses,  consider  this  pro- 
pounded by  Jager  in  his  Handbxich  der  Zoologie,  1877,  ii.  339:  '-The 
cells  of  the  cerebral  cortex  are  the  seats  of  Sensation,  because  they  are 
many  ;  but  the  seat  of  Consciousness  is  the  neuroglia,  because  that  lies 
between  the  cells,  and  is  one  undifferentiated  substance  !"  As  another 
specimen  of  the  purely  fanciful,  with  a  strange  confusion  of  physio- 
logical and  psychological  terms,  consider  this  proposition  laid  down 
in  the  Rapport  sur  le  Concours  de  1868,  presented  to  the  Academy  of 
Medicine  :  "  Nous  admettons  trois  grands  centres  superposes  Fun  k 
I'autre,  places  suivant  une  progression  d6croissante.  Audessus  de  tout, 
le  Moi;  puis  au  dessous,  les  Instincts  avec  les  facultes  du  second  ordre; 
ensuite  la  Moelle."  Psychologists  reading  such  passages  may  be  excused 
if  they  turn  away  with  impatience  from  the  aid  offered  them  by 
physiologists. 


THE   STUDY   OP   PSYCHOLOGY.       ^  189 

confusion  could  result  from  speaking  of  the  one  in 
terms  of  the  other.  To  the  morphologist  who  is^not, 
dealing  with  the  established  functions,  but  with  their 
evolution,  it  is  of  great  interest  to  trace  in  the  Crus- 
tacea the  modification  of  the  respiratory  organs  into 
swimming  organs,  and  to  show  how  in  the  Infusoria 
the  same  organs  are  employed  for  both  functions. 
In  like  manner,  it  is  a  gross  confusion  to  speak  of 
Sensation  and  Thought,  Instinct  and  Intelligence, 
Voluntary  and  Involuntary  actions,  as  if  these  terms 
did  not  rej)reseut  phenomena  markedly  distinct ;  but 
from  the  standpoint  of  genesis  it  is  needful  to  show 
that  all  are  Modes  of  Sensibility,  and  therefore  all 
fundamentally  the  same. 


THE    END. 


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